Q: I don’t see color!
A: That is so strange. As Trevor Noah has asked, how do you know when to stop at a traffic light?
In many parts of Africa, “I see you” is a standard greeting—an acknowledgement of the whole human being. “I don’t see color” is just a cute way of saying “I don’t see you” to people of color. Hence the many words that have been written on the subject of Black invisibility—oh, wait, didn’t Ralph Ellison write that novel?
Not to mention that beauty comes in all colors, and why would anyone want to miss out on even any of it?
Q: I marched for civil rights in the 1960s! I marched for Black Lives Matter!
A: That was then. This is now. Presumably, we all marched for ourselves, to make the world a better place for all of us to live in, and now look where we are.
Q: I voted for Barack Obama—twice! And I would have voted for him again if I could have!
A: Get Out. No, really, it’s a great movie—check it out.
Q: But some of my best friends/lovers/spouses/relatives are Black! How could anyone think I’m racist?
A. Wouldn’t that be like letting all men off the hook around the issue of misogyny just because they’re married to women and have mothers, sisters, and daughters? Or as the author of Black AF History and self-identified “writer of words and board-certified wypipologist” Michael Harriot so beautifully put it, “Dating a Black person does not mean you can’t be racist. If I fucked a fish, I still wouldn’t be able to swim.”
For that matter, feminists back in the day discovered to their chagrin that they themselves had internalized a lot of sexism. Similarly, it is possible to be Black and to have internalized White racism; Ibram X. Kendi has been particularly courageous on this subject in his book How to Be an Anti-Racist. Obviously, people of color in general and Black people in particular are highly motivated to get that mess out of their psyches, but if even Black people can suffer from internalized White racism, why would White people be trying to let ourselves off the hook just because we happen to know and love a few, or even many, Black people?
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