Interview Transcript

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MP: How did you feel after reading the post?

DB: Ummm… okay, with all due respect, I’m honestly getting a little annoyed. Why is EVERYTHING about race now? I mean you know me, I’m not a racist, but I just feel like people are making everything about race now. Why can’t we just see people for who they are, rather than their colors, or races, or whatever? I mean if a white girl touches another white girl’s hair, it has nothing to do with race, so why is it micro aggression or racism when it is a black girl’s hair? Aren’t you perpetuating racism by making these non-racial things racist? 

 

MP: Okay thank you for sharing. Just to clarify, are you suggesting that if people are all “color blind” and just quit talking about race, it would somehow make everyone’s life easier?

DB: What do you mean by color blind?

MP: Color blindness basically describes people’s mentality that racial differences do not exist and race does not factor in people’s daily experience. 

DB: Yeah I think so. I feel like being a white male, like I never thought race mattered, and things HAVE always been a lot simpler and I think easier that way. But now I just feel like race matters so much. My dad always turns up the volume of the TV and I’ve been listening to people talk about race like nonstop, and honestly sometimes I get depressed and annoyed. 

 

MP: Are you articulating the hardship you’ve been experiencing in a transition from being blind to color to recognizing its significance?

DB: Yeah something like that. I’m just saying from my experience things were a lot easier before, and now I feel like I can’t even say anything because I’m a white male. Like I think people wouldn’t take me seriously or they might attack me for what I say. 

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Interpretations of DB's Response

How might privilege create inertia to overcome color blindness?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What I gathered from DB’s response was that color blindness created a bubble of comfort where people in a position of privilege could avoid tackling the difficult discussions on power, oppression, and injustice that would make them “look bad” and affect their image of moral righteousness. As a white male, DB believed that by doing his part and not being a racist, he had power and control over his own narratives as to whether he was a good man. However, when issues of race were brought to the forefront of a public discourse that attacked the very source of his privilege, his whiteness, when he was associated with white slave owners, racists, and white supremacy, he felt wronged and victimized. There was almost a self-imposed reverse discrimination at play here, where he thought he was deprived of power to shape his own narrative. He felt essentialized by discussions of race that perpetuated how white people’s ignorance and racism were the source of social ills and others’ suffering, discussions that could stereotype him as a “bad man”. A sudden loss of privilege and power that recognizing the salience of “color” could induce might explain why it is difficult for some people to overcome their color blindness. However, I’d like to point out that the very difficulty of overcoming color blindness speaks to the necessity of doing so. The process of overcoming color blindness and embracing institutional oppression might induce discomfort in some, but opens up ways for people in positions of privilege to better understand albeit only parochially,  the fear and trauma that institutional oppression has befallen marginalized social groups in ages. 

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Reflections on My Interpretations

This interview was particularly hard for me. The interviewee was someone that I loved very much and have held dear to my heart. He is a nice person, and he does treat everyone equally and like he said he really is not a racist. What saddened me the most was the moment when privilege became so palpable that I felt almost helpless in wanting to explain the legitimacy of an issue to someone whose experience of privilege, which was not really his own fault either, creates a huge obstacle in conveying the underside experience. 

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While I did not impose my opinions on DB as I tried to remain a detached human research instrument rather, my internal emotional reaction revealed how I perceived myself on the spectrum of privilege, speaking to the frustration that I only felt when people in a position of relative privilege failed to understand the hardship that people in position of relatively less or little privilege, like myself, experience. Furthermore, the fact that privilege was the first factor that registered in my mind during my conversation with DB once again reflects my tendency to situation human experiences in the concept of power and power dynamics, as it was shown in my interpretation of LL's interview.

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