“I don’t see color”. A long-ish, non-subtweeting, thread. 1/9

I know what you’re trying to say. Racism isn’t the life you’ve personally lived. You’re kind to everyone and you’ve been taught to ‘treat everyone the same’. Great. But that’s not very realistic. And it’s not what we hear when you say it. 2/9

Again, I’m glad you’ve never used the n word and have lots of friends of various colors. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t been a part of, and beneficiary of racism. It doesn’t mean you’ve never inadvertently or deliberately done or said a racist thing. 3/9

‘Not seeing color’ means you’ve narrowly redefined racism to include only certain very specific behaviors, which, congrats, you’ve never done. As a result, you’ve missed racism happening all around you, even if you were not participating. 4/9

Not seeing color means you don’t see how much more often we get pulled over and questioned, because it doesn’t fit your definition. In fact, you can’t see police at all. 5/9

Not seeing color means you didn’t notice the security guard following us around Macy’s. 6/9

Not seeing color, you don’t notice where we get seated in restaurants and how long we wait. 7/9

You can’t understand our experiences with the medical profession, or with legislators, or with our kids’ teachers and principals, or with our bosses and coworkers, because those things were never included in your definitions. 8/9

And if you can’t see those things, you can’t see the whole of our experiences and how they’ve shaped us. If you say you don’t see color, you don’t see us. And that’s all we hear. /end