Color-Blind

Contextual Quote

"We all see race. We can’t help it. What’s more, race can influence how we’re treated and how we treat others. We are all capable of racial bias. In that sense, no one is truly color-blind. Even people who are literally color-blind — because their eyes lack the right cone cells — still effortlessly distinguish between people of different races.

But to interpret the term “color-blind” too literally is to misunderstand the philosophy of color blindness that I seek to defend. Rather, “color-blind” is an expression like “warmhearted”: It uses a physical metaphor to reference an abstract idea. To describe a person as warmhearted is not to say something about the temperature of their heart but about the kindness of their spirit. Similarly, to advocate color blindness is not to pretend you don’t notice race. To advocate color blindness is to endorse an ethical principle: that we should treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives."

- Coleman Hughes [1]