What is Color-blindness? What does it  Look Like?

• I don't see color. I just see people. 

• We're all just people.

• I don't care if you're black, white, green, or purple-polka-dotted!

• #AllLivesMatter

These are some of the terms we hear and examples of colorblindness. 

Some may think colorblindness is a good thing,  It focuses on commonalities between people, such as their shared humanity. However, colorblindness alone is not sufficient to heal racial wounds on a national or personal level. It is only a half-measure that in the end operates as a form of racism according to Monica T Williams Ph.D. Racism Is a strong term, but it looks at the issue straight in its unseeing eye. In a colorblind society, white people, who are unlikely to experience disadvantages due to race, can effectively ignore racism in American life, justify the current social order, and feel more comfortable with their relatively privileged standing in society (Fryberg, 2010). Most people of color, however, who regularly encounter difficulties due to race, experience colorblind ideologies quite differently. Colorblindness creates a society that denies their negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage, and invalidates their unique perspectives.

Blind means not being able to see things. I don't want to be blind. I want to see things clearly, even if they make me uncomfortable. I found this sentence to give a great perspective on colorblindness. 

My color insight note

I work in an elementary school with 340 students. We have approximately 60 staff members 58 are white and 2 are  black. Our principal is a white male and every teacher including teacher assistants are white, 3 male teachers, and all the rest are women. I have a population of MLL students around 25-30 and 15 black students. I have never really sat down and thought about my students and staff and how many are non-white until I started this class. 

My husband’s grandparents are from Ukraine, they immigrated from Ukraine to Poland and were sponsored by a family in New York to have them come to America. His Grandfather Arsen and grandmother Elgokia, she was pregnant with my father-in-law at the time and his uncle was 9. His grandmother was a seamstress and his grandfather was a locksmith. They later moved to Pawtucket with not much money. They never learned to speak English but both my father-in-law and his uncle learned English in the school system.(this reminds me of many of my student's families) When they came over to New York they said their last name in Ukrainian so we don't know if Our last name is spelled correctly and the proper pronunciation. I found this interesting. They were both 36 with 2 children, they were able to make a living and didn't speak a word of English. They had issues with people giving them difficulty because of the language barrier. I thought about them with this reading and video, coming to a new country with children not speaking English, and how were they treated, We get people who look at our last name and say I'm not even going to try and say that, it was hurtful and disrespectful to them. I found their original document when they arrived in NY in 1956.