Colour Blind
Having a father who was a senior school physics teacher could have ensured all sorts of benefits. He could have helped me with my homework. He could have given me some extra classes in order to ensure I came home with an excellent report each term (in physics, at least). He could have found some (easy to read) textbooks to help me. He did none of those things. We did have a reflecting telescope in the garden for a few years, and I was able to look up at planets and some star constellations, but any details were for me to track down. There were interesting books on his shelves, but I read them if I chose to do so, and we didn’t talk about them. Damn!
On the other hand, there was other stuff. There was a box, containing some 38 cards, each one numbered and each containing as series of coloured dots inside a circle. Since I was left to my own devices, I borrowed the box, read the covering guide, and decided to test myself. In case you haven’t guessed already, what I had a copy of the Ishihara test, a way to identify colour discrimination deficiencies. Shinobu Ishihara was a Japanese university professor, who developed his test in 1917. His cards embedded numbers and shapes using different colours: they were easy to identify by those who had normal colour vision, but they were invisible, or difficult to see, by those with a red-green colour vision defect. They were fun!
The plates include six different test procedures:
- A Demonstration plate: (typically including the numeral “12”); designed to be visible by all persons, whether normal or colour vision deficient. This one card was for use in demonstration exercises only;
- Transformation plates: these were designed so that individuals with colour vision defect should see a different figure from individuals with normal colour vision;
- Vanishing plates: these were designed so that only individuals with normal colour vision could recognize the figure;
- Hidden digit plates: again, these were to identify individuals with colour vision defects, as only they could recognize the figure;
- Diagnostic plates: intended to determine one of two types of colour vision defect and how severe this was; and,
- Tracing plates: instead of including a number, these had a line running across the plate, and, once again, only visible to those with a colour deficiency.
I am fairly confident that I didn’t really know what I was doing. I neglected to take account of the warnings given in the handbook about the accuracy of the test, which depended on using the proper level of light intensity to illuminate the plates. Moreover, proper testing technique allows only three seconds per plate for an answer, and you were not allowed to touch or trace of the numbers. Naturally, I looked at the plates in poor light, and helped myself by tracing the numbers I could see, especially when they weren’t particularly clear. The result was that I managed to convince myself I was severely colour blind and would never be able to drive a car because I wouldn’t be able to discriminate between red and green traffic lights. Now, that was a worry!
I’m not severely colour blind. When I repeated the test (the cards are randomly ordered each time) in better lighting conditions, it turned out that I was only mildly red-green colour blind. Most of the time, I am unaware of the slight discrimination lapses this causes. For me, the most noticeable was during my brief time believing I could learn to play golf. If I rested my ball on a red tee on the grassy teeing box, and managed to hit the tee as well as the ball, I often couldn’t ‘see’ it, until I did. Once I saw it, it stood out quite clearly in the green grass.
I suspect that you may not be particularly interested in red-green colour blindness. All this was by way of introduction to another form of colour blindness, where failing to see the colours is ideal. Of course, I am referring to skin colour, where we talk about colour blindness as a positive attribute, since ‘not seeing’ the difference between skin colours is a prerequisite for avoiding discrimination.
First up, a confession. I had to check exactly what being colour blind in relation to other people means. Off to Wikipedia which informed me “the multicultural psychology field generates four beliefs that constitute the racial colour-blindness approach. The four beliefs are as follows: (1) skin color is superficial and irrelevant to the quality of a person’s character, ability or worthiness, (2) in a merit-based society, skin color is irrelevant to merit judgments and calculation of fairness, (3) as a corollary, in a merit-based society, merit and fairness are flawed if skin color is taken into the calculation, (4) ignoring skin color when interacting with people is the best way to avoid racial discrimination.” That seemed clear (if potentially repetitive), but there was more: “This is further divided into two dimensions, color evasion and power evasion. Color evasion is the belief that people should not be treated differently on the basis of their color’ (didn’t we just cover that?), whereas “power evasion posits that systemic advantage based on color should have no influence on what people can accomplish, and accomplishments are instead based solely on one’s own work performance.” I guess all that comes down to the fact that colour blindness in this sense is concerns prejudice based on a person’s skin colour.
As a statement of appropriate behaviour, there have been many cases addressing colour blindness practice. Back in 1896, a famous US Supreme Court case, Plessey v. Fergusson was summarised in one of the judges statements: “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.” Good, except that back then this wasn’t the conclusion of the majority in the case! The decision taken was to support discrimination, the predominant view at the end of the 19th Century, when laws allowing racial segregation were permissible in the US. Of course, we know better now …
Um, do we? The Supreme Court never abandons an issue, each decision being merely a way station on a seemingly never-ending path. In recent times the court has addressed colour blindness in the context of affirmative action (another topic that keeps returning to the bench). This has led to some interesting remarks. In 1978 four justices objected to using the notion of colour blindness, observing “we cannot … let color blindness become myopia which masks the reality that many ‘created equal’ have been treated within our lifetimes as inferior both by the law and by their fellow citizens.” That made me think for a moment. They are noting that supporting colour blindness can ‘mask’ a very different reality in practice. True.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg reminded the court in 2003 that “The Constitution is both color blind and color conscious. To avoid conflict with the equal protection clause, a classification that denies a benefit, causes harm, or imposes a burden must not be based on race. In that sense, the Constitution is color blind. But the Constitution is color conscious to prevent discrimination being perpetuated and to undo the effects of past discrimination.” Even conservative justice Clarence Thomas, in 2007, wrote “the color-blind Constitution does not bar the government from taking measures to remedy past state-sponsored discrimination – indeed, it requires that such measures be taken in certain circumstances.” It’s complicated!
As parents, one of the early challenges many of us face is helping our children understand the ideal that skin colour is insignificant. I’ve often referred to Martin Luther King’s eloquent 1963 speech ‘I Have Dream’. This includes, among so many memorable lines: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Today we want colour blind approaches to include measures to ensure people are treated equally as individuals, a stepping stone that leads to a more equal society, and one in which race privilege is no longer exercised as it once was. However, does that get rid of racism and oppression?
Colour blindness does not replace the need for affirmative action. Nor is affirmative action an easy path, as it, too, confronts various challenges. This is because narrowly race-based programs disregard a candidate’s socioeconomic background and therefore can fail to focus help on the poorer portion of any community that actually needs assistance. In the case of US society, it is clearly the case that there are millions of black people living middle- and upper-class lives and millions of white people live in poverty, with the consequence that race alone is far from being an accurate indication of privilege or of need. Some argue that affirmative action recognising someone’s social class is more important than recognising someone’s race. Justice Clarence Thomas, one of whose views I’ve already quoted, has argued that race-oriented programs create “a cult of victimization” and imply black people require “special treatment in order to succeed”. It isn’t clear what he sees as a more appropriate approach.
It is almost like a puzzle. You want to be colour blind and treat each and everyone you meet as a unique individual. At the same time, you’re painfully aware racial prejudice is alive and thriving, and should be stamped out. The issue, of course, is in what you ‘see’. Seeing is cultural, historical, and personal. It certainly isn’t objective – whatever that might mean.
I learnt an early example during my school years. I grew up in a London suburb. In my secondary school class, there were a bunch of boys (it was a single sex school), and for most of my time there I didn’t think much about differences, except in terms of sport (at which I was pathetic) and academic study (how can anyone understand and speak French? Most of us were Anglo protestants by background, and I can still remember the shock of going to a classmates party and discovering he was Jewish, attended a synagogue, his parents fairly orthodox. Clearly, I had belatedly discovered we weren’t all ‘the same’.
If my childhood had been relatively sheltered, once I left home and went to university, my world began to change. Now the difference between individual and context became far more evident. Students came from various parts of the world, and two Indian men shared the flat above mine. Shantanu and Kranti were friends. We would occasionally eat in together in an Indian restaurant. I didn’t see them as ‘different’ from the other friends I had, and I think our relationships could be described as largely colour blind. Then Shantanu returned to India. His parents had arranged his marriage, and when he returned with his wife the person I met was dressed traditionally, her face shielded much of the time, and very shy. A student of social anthropology, I was seeing and understanding my neighbour in a different light. He was Hindu; his wife unable to leave their flat by herself. As I am writing this I realise, to my embarrassment, I can’t remember her name. They soon moved away, and I lost contact. I like to think that our relationship had remained colour blind, but it was certainly overlain with cultural difference. As I recall I also tried, clumsily, to help his wife step outside and take part in the life of the town. I failed. It wasn’t my business.
That was many years ago. I was young, sheltered, brought up in an inclusive white English middle class culture. At the same I was in love with science, and people were something on the periphery. Even when I started to get involved with social anthropology, it was very much about ‘other cultures’ as my first textbook was titled. Today I can say I was prejudiced: implicitly distinguishing between ‘us and them’. That was changed by moving to Australia.
In Australia I began, slowly but surely, to come into more and more contact with people from diverse cultures and began to have many friends who were from Asia and South America, together with indigenous Australians. Even then, and for a long time, that was about friends, just as it had been in my student days. I think it was only when I starting to visit Asia regularly that I began to start addressing my embedded prejudices. To be in Kuala Lumpur or Shanghai and realise you are in the minority, to confront literature, art, music, and thinking very different from your own, now no longer distant and largely invisible but all around you and obvious, that really reframes how you look at others.
This wasn’t about exercising colour blindness, that was easy. This was about confronting very different lived experiences. It ensured that some of those deeper prejudices about ‘other people’ had to be addressed and dismissed. I don’t want to imply that I have abandoned and unlearnt all the cultural and social prejudices of my youth. I fear many are still there. However, many of the simplistic views reflecting my middle-class white English male background have certainly been set aside. Today, it is more often the case that I am aware I am an outsider in many contexts. A while back, I found spending a day in a remote Aboriginal community quite extraordinary. It took no time at all for me to realise that the people I was meeting were just like me in many ways, but they had access to knowledge and views that were way outside my previous experience. I was the odd one out. To offer another example, I remember being told that many Japanese people with whom you meet will be engaged and interesting but are still likely to discuss your odd physical characteristics when they talk about the meeting afterwards. It’s good to discover you are the object of prejudice, because the experience offers a mirror in which to reflect on your own behaviour.
It is an oddity of the English language that colour blind has both a positive and a negative connotation. Leaving on one side how limited it is in describing how we see other people; it is a potentially positive way of behaving. On the other side, being unable to discriminate some colours does have negative implications, a deficiency which also implies some failure in a person’s makeup.
In both its forms, colour blindness is hard to overcome. Visual colour blindness can’t be solved by a special pair of glasses. We can only see what our ocular system allows. Social colour blindness is a way of ‘looking’ at other people that has much to commend it, but it can’t correct our our failure to see what is really there. While it was a term that helped thinking a while back, I am beginning to think that ‘colour blindness’ could be a concept that has reached its ‘use by’ date. Visual acuity and sensitivity to colour variations do matter, but we are all ‘colour blind’ to some extent, and the terms imply some kind of deficiency in their usage. Equally, recognising that the people we meet are ‘like us’ is easy, but it glosses over the real differences in life experiences, social practices and barriers that really matter. Rather than resting on the comfort of ascribing colour blindness, perhaps we should take time to pay respectful attention to individuals, and do so carefully, to each and every person we meet.
