Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race

by Patricia J. Williams

In these five eloquent and passionate pieces (which she gave as the prestigious Reith Lectures for the BBC) Patricia J. Williams asks how we might achieve a world where "color doesn't matter"--where whiteness is not equated with normalcy and blackness with exoticism and danger. Drawing on her own experience, Williams delineates the great divide between "the poles of other people's imagination and the nice calm center of oneself where dignity resides," and discusses how it might be bridged as a first step toward resolving racism. Williams offers us a new starting point--"a sensible and sustained consideration"--from which we might begin to deal honestly with the legacy and current realities of our prejudices.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Race, Philosophy, Essays, History, Theory

74 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1998

About the author

Patricia J. Williams is an American legal scholar and a proponent of critical race theory.

Reviews

[Sagar]

A great, short, powerful read if you want to understand why race blindness can be nefarious

[Tiffany Conner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short book based upon a series of lectures Professor Williams gave in England, it is densely packed with piercing insights. What's more, Professor Williams is quite the wordsmith. I wrote many a passage down in my reader response journal. Regardless of how one feels about the claims that we are now living in a "post-racial" society, any semi-thinking individual can concede that we are in fact far from rooting out the problem of racism even if we are making monumental strides toward looking past race. Even so, institutional disparities are glaring and remain in need of attention (See the example Professor Williams provides of a mortgage company attempting to gouge her for a loan at a higher interest rate after learning that though she "sounded" white over the phone when she applied for her loan, she was indeed black. Their justification? The area was experiencing a dip in property values. She later learned this to be untrue. What the broker really meant was that once she, a black law professor, moved into the neighborhood, their models foresaw a depression in property value. What to call this if not blatant discriminatory practice?). This book remains relevant commentary if only because Professor Williams remains an optimist and insists that ultimately our humanity will supersede all other considerations. Simple, intelligent optimism at its finest. I tend to agree with her, even in my most cynical of moments.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a sign of Williams's ability to illustrate a key point that she opens these essays with an anecdote about her son's nursery school and being told her was colour blind because he continually told his teachers that it didn't matter what colour the grass/sky/wall/whatever else they asked about was. It turns out that he was the only black child in the school and in the manner of good liberals they responded to this by continually telling the kids that colour did not matter.... her point is about the irony of their not recognising their own messages in a different context and about the importance of the politics of colour/'race' in contemporary US political and social life, not as a thing to assert but as a thing to confront, recognise for what it is and what it is not (such as a euphemism for poverty or class) and challenge if meaningful social change is going to come about. These brief essays, based on her 1997 Reith Lectures for the BBC, are marvellous, and she is one of our finest contemporary public intellectuals.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

The text of Patricia Willaims' fabulous 1995 Reith Lectures, available here for sharp insight into the banality of race and racism, it pernicious effects and ways to deal with living in a racist world.

[Erik Larsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I worry that we tend to enshrine the notion [of colorblindness] with a kind of utopianism whose naïveté will ensure its elusiveness."

Williams brilliantly brings to light "the new rhetoric of racism", which as she says, does not mention race. Racism as the "public secret" of society brings with it the insight that these dynamics play out on interpersonal and systemic levels. Her anecdotes, reminiscent of and equally telling as Claudia Rankine's "Citizen", are heartbreaking. And yet her vision, "an investment that envisions each of us in each other" is... hopeful (?) Perhaps the difference between hope and optimism is that hope sees a better world in some future ahead, whereas optimism (at least of the blind and blinding kind she exposes here) tries to will itself into seeing a better world here.

What Williams so thoughtfully and articulately explores in her lectures on Seeing a Color-Blind Future is the unfortunate, and perhaps outright pernicious, tendency to discuss Ideals as if they were Realities. Can we recognize progress, and recognize the ideals that should serve as our North Stars, without falling into the trap of self-congratulation and/or denial that tells us our ideal has been realized? Can we navigate the nuance of seeing that we live in a more just world, but not a Just World? One sees this done not only with the language of color-blindness, but of things such as a meritocracy as well (and its intimately connected concept, the 'American Dream').

She asks "how can it be that so many well-meaning white people have never thought about race when so few blacks pass a single day without being reminded of it?"(pg. 28). The espousal of color-blindness as a social reality is merely a manifestation of privilege, of assuming the neutral (read: hegemonic) position: you don't see race because you don't see yourself (and are not seen as) possessing race, and that itself is the privilege. Color is very much a reality (or "device" to use the term of the Hansberry play, Les Blancs), and to pretend otherwise is "an ideological confusion at best, and denial at its very worst" (pg. 4). It is important, "it is a part of ourselves" (pg. 37), and yet, it should not matter.

In some ways, the tension between color-blindness and race-consciousness is concerned with some of the questions of means/ends we've been discussing. Some believe that we can only use color-blind means as a way of realizing the end (or ideal) of color-blindness. Take for example, the following statement from Chief Justice John Roberts in the Parents vs. Seattle School District opinion: "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race". Needless to say, the Court ruled against the district's interest in maintaining racial diversity, citing the 14th Amendment. But such a decree seems to completely reduce the context in which such a program would even come to be, one involving a complicated (and recent!) history of housing and education segregation, as has been used in arguments for affirmative-action in such cases. The Aristotelian mean here is not an easy one to find. Perhaps the best route forwards "means being sensitive to the contexts that require color-consciousness for the sake of realizing an ideal and distant color-blind world" (taken from Ronald R. Sundstrom's essay "The Prophetic Tension between Race Consciousness and the Ideal of Color-Blindness", an essay on the political philosophy of MLK). The end of color-blindness is fairness. And yet the end of race-consciousness is promoting a fair equality of opportunity. So how do we best get there?

I read a recent Op-Ed explaining an instance of how marketing race-blind policies as racial equity initiatives (https://www.slowboring.com/p/race-bli...) does more harm than good. Basically, a left-of-center economic agenda with broad public support loses public support when it attempts to market those campaigns as dealing exclusively with racial equity. Perhaps because of the neoliberal tendency to fall into zero-sum thinking, this means that many in the majority interpret this gain for "others" as a loss for themselves, even when in fact, some of the poorest (and most anti-welfare) districts in the country could most benefit from the federal benefits being promoted. In an oversimplified way, this is what has led some to believe that voters care more about cultural self-interest than economic self-interest (like Thomas Frank's "What's A Matter with Kansas?"). By turning off these voters, more conservative (and sometimes explicitly nationalist/racist/xenophobic) politicians can use this cultural self-interest to block economically progressive legislation. Is the mention of race in this instance doing more harm than good, from a consequentialist perspective? The conversation matters. It does. ("Why can we not speak of race but only mutter and groan?" pg. 29). But what comes after the conversation?

[Harry Palacio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Race is it indicative of class? Does color define power? It seems race has transformed the barriers and erected fundamental rifts in humanity… in the era of the Greeks and Romans there yet were slaves some received grace to be free and some stayed imprisoned same transferrances can be summed up in modern America … red lining reality… racial surcharge what could be gathered in a culture that is not new of human incongruence? Many may not know the spectacle of black or Afro-Latino or biopic predestination… is whiteness the unfatigable perjoritive norm for racism meaning has black culture been given the culture transmography from poor criminal to elected passable white after middle class status ? It’s interesting how blacks are seen as white until alienation or catastrophe but I understand class and race in the context of economy and the status of education which especially during slavery were limited resources … the knowledge of history and race brings people towards spacial liberation the freedom to be who they wish and live where they find most equity… in this way I assume the idea of racial divide an economy of access to wealth or rather education… white or black rich or poor communities move toward places of rich knowledge rich locations for the advancement of their unique family … when the market value of housing drops due to invasive technology human incongruity which is in many ways machine or given over to the mechanics of finding a more sustainable form of illumination… meaning… the stock of man is dependent on how someone can raise or lower the efficacy of power in societal relationships… if racial divide creates a lack of wealth for a community if the standard of beauty lies solely on one category of humanity then this makes sense to make the person's status subject to extraneous factors besides cars houses education and be socially accepted to make its association to a level of connection with higher classed people or those with more economic resources to help create a fertile environment for placing their seed into roost… in a more basic way humans classify race disparity with the way or manner in which association with one group or another gives us ease of access to resources to find a mate build a nest rear children and live a longer healthier and more comfortable life… in a sense my prognosis for alleviating the divide put in mechanically from systematic segregation and slavery would be for an equanimous balance of power WHICH inveriably we actually do see in society although it is understood less and less and even overlooked such conflict in body structure of the poorer class the bourgeois and the untouchable class can be seen in my controversial perspective as being more resilient and stronger not necessarily black or white but based on the economic imbalance of work roles … yes it is said more educated more spiritual and healthier living proves longevity but if the master, so to speak, lives close at hand to the slave, so to speak, does not both parties benefit? Not to say that the slave always wishes to be the master one day… in effect it may be controversial to speak in these terms about class disruption or imbalance but that was why my thesis on education is the overbearing reality of emancipation and will always be the sole source of freedom … from education in the arts or music or sports to science and philosophy or politics

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Williams is a beautiful writer. Her work as a law professor does not fall prey to the verbose legalese American culture commonly associated with the profession. Instead Williams speaks with a clarity and cadence I find present in the likes of Lorde and Morrison. Despite having been written over two decades ago, this book reads as if it was written in the past year. (In a way, it reads almost like a more contemporary text that Tim Wise's work on it in Between Barack and a Hard Place.) Williams's ideas are accessible and useful in deconstructing the complicated cultural phenomena of "color-blindness."

[Kat Dixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a privilege to read this (very slim) book.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a slight book that packs a wallop. At only 80 pages divided into five essays, it's a quick read. It's certainly not forgettable, however - Williams takes on issues of race from many angles, and the result is a highly readable yet powerful meditation on American culture, the idea of being "color-blind," and what it will take for our society to move through past hurt to a more hopeful future. I would recommend this book to any interested in issues of race, but particularly those who are new to the conversation.

[Mckinley · Rating 4 out of 5]

See: author Bell Hooks, Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan G.
Johnson, "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity by Beverly D. Tatum, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State by Michael K. Brown,

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for class: The Relational Self.

[Jerry Wall]

1997 bbc reith lecture
autographed copy
a version of what I call the Michaell Jackson syndrome of self-elimination.p 29
A best selling book claims to have proved anew that blacks and poor people are more stupid than everyone else . . . Or, as they put it, "genetically inferior" to the rest of humanity. . . p. 47
(the Bell Curve???)
. . . "What percentage of Haiti's population is white?" asked the American. Ninety-five percent came the answer. The American official was flustered and, assuming that the Haitian was mistaken, exclaimed, "I don't understand -- how on earth do you come up with such a figure."
"Well, how do you measure blackness in the United States?"
"Anyone with a black ancestor."
"Well, that's exactly how we measure whiteness," retorted the Haitian. p. 52 !!!!!