I know that right off the bat a lot of people are going to click on this article, guns blazing, ready to knock down whatever argument I have set up. I want to challenge you to read my entire article and not just a portion of it so that I have the ability to make my full argument. With that being said, I’ll try and keep it short.
A lot of people nowadays want to appear progressive and say things like, “I Don’t See Color.” When I first heard that, I thought, “Of course! That’s me too! I don’t see color, I treat everyone equally, I love everyone no matter your gender, race, or sexual preference. This makes sense. I don’t see color either.”
Wrong. Of course I want equality between men and women, of course I will treat a person as a person regardless of what they look like, but I do see color and that's okay.
The problem with saying, “I don't see color” is that you've ignored an important characteristic of who they are as a person.
I’m a white, German, female. That is who I am and no matter what, I can’t change the fact that I’m a woman or that my skin is white. It’s an accident of my birth. Do I have certain privileges because I am white? Yes, absolutely. But saying that I don’t see color is like saying that I don’t respect your past or where you came from to get to the place you are right now.
I have certain privileges because I am white and I recognize that. But, I want you to know that I work hard to be where I am. I also want you to know that I recognize how hard you worked to get to where you are, too.
See, a person’s past is so incredibly important in making the person that they are today that by saying you see someone equally means that you don’t recognize the struggles or the hardships that they might have had to overcome to get there.
I see color and I respect it. I respect that African Americans came from a state of oppression and even though I have never faced oppression in this matter, I can sympathize with how hard it has been throughout the years to overcome something like that.
As a person, your past, your culture, and everything that has led you to who you are has influenced you. Quite honestly, I don’t want to see you as someone who is just like me. I want to see you as the wonderful, unique, person that you are. I want to sit down with you and listen to what has happened in your life and love on you through it all.
To be honest, I see color all around and it’s beautiful. Please don’t mistake me for saying that because I see color does not mean I don’t treat everyone around me equally. On the contrary, I think that everyone deserves the same level of respect regardless of who they are, what the color of their skin is, what their sexual preference is, or who they voted for in this past election.
Your skin doesn’t define who you are, but it also isn’t something we should see through. As a society, we should become better at acknowledging the hardships, the struggles, and everything in-between that made a person who they are.
So, do you see color too?
