Color-blindness. This term is often touted by those who claim that race, in our present day circumstance, is a somewhat over-used conceptor at least insignificant, in other words, that one will be measured by virtue of one’s work and character—not by one’s race. However, individuals who often ascribe to this philosophy—such as residents of North Berkeley, for instance—often live in areas where one would be hard pressed to find a black neighbor. Oh, I know a few middle-class blacks who actually live in North Berkeley, but they are the exception, trust me; they live in a city where recent census stats calculate the white population there to be 82 percent. So, my question is this: how can those who purportedly profess that race is insignificant also live in areas that statistically guarantee that racial complexity will be very low? If race was, as these individuals confess, truly insignificant, then it seems that they would likewise unassumingly or incidentally meander and drift into areas where racial diversity is proportionally higher. These enlightened individuals are, after all, “color-blind,” and they’re not attuned to artificial racial signifiers such as white, black, brown, red or yellow. Right?
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