LIKE Martin Luther King Jnr, I have a dream. My dream is that one day the race of the winner of a Barbadian beauty pageant winner would not be a topic of conversation, because we would have finally overcome centuries of the conditioning of slavery, colonisation and neo-colonisation.Barbados ain dey yet. Doan fret too much bout it. It is doubtful if anywhere in the world is.
“Until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes, there will be war,” said Haile Selassie I. In Barbados, skin bleaching is creeping in, we still talk about good hair and pretty eyes, and the width of the Prime Minister’s nose was made a political issue. We are still a very segregated society. Expect and prepare for some disagreements surrounding the issue of race. Seek to understand the issue to find real solutions and not just wish it would go away. Embrace the discussion.
“Why can’t we all just get along?” Rodney King asked the famous question in 1991 in the aftermath of riots in Los Angeles, California. The riots were sparked by the acquittal of police officers who were charged with severely beating King after a high speed car-chase. Fifteen years later there are riots in Charlotte, North Carolina after yet another in a string of black victims was shot by police.
Why can’t we all just get along? Maybe it is because we just want to go along about our business as though all is well, until it undeniably isn’t. Deny we will, for as long as we can. We care more about moving along smartly than we do about getting along.
Many would like to think that Bimshire is an oasis of racial harmony in a world of heated racial antagonism. There were plantations and periods during the era of slavery that were marked by peace as well. As long as everyone knew their place and stayed there, all was quiet.
Then, as well as now, the peace was a fragile one. It may not be as explosive as in 1688 or present day USA, but unstable nontheless. When someone steps out of their designated space the volcano rumbles. We desperately protect our cold ethnic peace. Minority groups contribute to the frozen climate by holding their lil corners and the majority content themselves with holding the bulk of the geographical space while conceding the bulk of the economic terrain.
Underneath this dusty rug of calm accumulates resentments, mistrust, misunderstanding and fear. People who speak about the bulge in the floor are quickly branded as stirring up trouble. “Everybody else stepping over it peaceful and gine long bout dey business. Wuh happen to you? Why you always talking bout race? You can’t see de rest uh we colour-blind?”
Colour-blind
People who say they have reached the MLK’s and Haile Selassie’s imagined mountain top state of colour blindness, are making an extraordinary claim. It would require some extraordinary proof to convince someone who has even a little understanding of how the human mind works.
Science, common sense and experience suggest that we are good at fooling ourselves. In science, the Implicit Bias test has proven that a person can be a champion for equal rights in their conscious mind and still subconsciously have bigoted tendencies. There are examples of persons who love their other-racial family member or friend, but have negative attitudes to others who are similar to their loved one. I had the experience of speaking to a black person who was adamant that they were colour-blind. In the same conversation, they talked about how pleasant it was to work for their Asian employers and that they could never work for a black man again. According to results of the Implicit Bias test, true racial impartiality can happen, but it is rare.
This race thing is not just in our heads. It’s in our nervous systems. Reactions to issues of race are like reactions to snakes or fire, an attractive body or good smelling food. They are often reflexive. It is as easy to forget about race as it is to forget to pull your hand away from a flame or forget to become aroused when someone you are attracted to presents themselves to you dressed like they were in the Garden of Eden. Why would you want to? The world is still very racially divided, skewed and imbalanced.
Colour blindness is a useful tool in the hands of those who want to maintain the racial status quo. If you can convince people to close their eyes to colour, then they also close their eyes to the institutionalised and systemic imbalances that exist in relation to colour. This allows the imbalances to continue unaddressed.
Those on the higher end of the scale can stay up, unchallenged, and with a clear conscience because they refuse to see the hand weighing down the other side. Those on the lower end continue to accept being weighed down, because they can’t even see the heavy chains that surround them.
Colour blindness not only prevents us from addressing interracial issues, it also prevents dealing with issues within a particular group itself, because that group is not supposed to exist.
Look, colour blindness is just blindness.
Adrian Green is a creative communications specialist.
Email: Adriangreen1@gmail.com
