Takeaways From: "Colorblindness is the New Racism" & "Color Blind or Color Brave?"

 ❗Talking points: 

"Race remains a formative identity category that impacts the lives of both Whites and people of color, albeit in different ways." (p. 67) This quote from the beginning really stood out to me. Race identity genuinely shapes a person's entire life - from the social structures they navigate, to their daily experiences, to how others perceive them and how they move through the world.

On page 69, Armstrong and Wildman wrote, "Whereas colorblindness urges us not to notice race, color insight says 'do not be afraid; notice your race and the race of others around you; racism and privilege still do affect people's lives; learn more about the racial dynamic.'" I felt like this quote resonated with me a lot as many people ignore the race of everyone around them in hopes that it'll all go away. However, even if race does not impact my life, it impacts so many people's lives on a daily basis. Not having to think about my own race is a privilege within itself. This connects directly to Mellody Hobson's TED Talk, where she says “race is one of those topics in America that makes people extraordinarily uncomfortable. You bring it up at a dinner party or in a workplace environment, it is literally the conversational equivalent of touching the third rail”. She goes on to say that she had been afraid, but the first step to solving any problem is to not hide from it, and the first step to any form of action is awareness.

"No person is purely privileged or unprivileged; we are privileged in respect to some categories and not privileged in respect to others. Sometimes one strand is dominant, sometimes another. This causes the experience of privilege to be further obscured; the presence of privilege may be further hidden from our vocabulary and consciousness if we focus only on the ways in which we face disadvantage" (p. 70). I felt this quote towards the end of the reading was important because so many forms of privilege and disadvantage exist in the world. It all depends on the lens you are using and how you are uncovering what lies beneath the surface.

⭐Argument Statement: Armstrong and Wildman argue for the application of color insight rather than color blindness as an approach to thinking about race. 

🌎Connections: While reading the "Racial Observation Exercise" on p. 68, I reflected on how race operates in educational settings and recognized both my own privileges and my own defensiveness. Typically a defensive mechanism is a mental process intended to protect us from uncomfortable thoughts or feelings. I made this connection while reading the excerpt on p. 70 about the hands on the seatbelt being white hands. Once, I did an activity in an undergrad class that included a PowerPoint on defensiveness. You had to answer all types of questions, and there were a variety of images. At the very end of the PowerPoint, there was a question about the images and what we noticed. I did not notice that every single picture had a white person. I automatically became defensive, but I also discovered an example of my own privilege in my daily life. This is exactly what Armstrong and Wildman mean when they discuss how privilege remains hidden from our consciousness - I literally could not see whiteness because it was my default lens. If you are unsure of what defensiveness means or how to navigate it, I found an interesting TED talk on YouTube: Link

ChatGPT Connection: Link to AI thread