(no subject)

uppitybrownlady wrote a really good little piece entitled Being “colour blind” is NOT a solution that I think people should read.

Quote:

Colour blindness is not a solution, it’s an endpoint. It’s a destination we must arrive at.

Colour blindness would mean to ignore the current perceptions of races, and racism stemming from those perceptions. It will not undo all of the years of learning that we have all undertaken. We will not unlearn that Europe was simply going abroad and settling in the “New World”, and all of knowledge was created by Europeans (well, the important ones, anyway). We will not unlearn that if the race of a murder victim is not specified (or divulged through name) in a news story, it must be a white person. We will not unlearn that Natives are supposedly ‘all’ alcoholics, drug users, and criminals, not because of colonialism and racism, but because that is just how Aboriginals are. We will not unlearn that young black men are only ever out to rob, stab, shoot, or sell drugs to you, and any time there is a young black man doing anything but robbing, stabbing, shooting, or selling drugs, he must be exceptional. We will not unlearn that businesses, media, politics, and other major institutions are inhabited by a majority white because they did it on their own. 

I'm excited about Obama being president, though I think some of the comments coming out today (well, and previously as well) are...annoying. But that's for another day, when I have time to think of a response and not just fly off the handle.