Abstract
Colorblindness is a popular metaphor in contemporary discourse. It references the ocular condition wherein people cannot visually identify or discern colors to critique the pervasive avoidance of naming and acknowledging racialized aspects of the social world. For instance, the phrase “I don’t see color” as a response to accusations of racism has been skewered by comedians and commentators. It is also a concept familiar to sociologists, especially those of us who study race and racism. In the wake of the 2003 publication of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s massively influential Racism without Racists, colorblindness (or rather, colorblind racial ideology) has become a critical component of a major sociological paradigm. Yet, in our sociological silos, it can be easy to forget that conversations about colorblindness are active across a range of academic, political, practitioner, and activist spaces. Within this context, Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines, edited by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and George Lipsitz, takes up the task of putting critical voices from different disciplines in conversation to identify unifying themes and struggles.
Particularly within the orienting and agenda-setting pieces of this volume, it becomes clear that the contributors and editors are not simply satisfied to demonstrate the importance of “seeing race again” within varying scholarly and educational endeavors. They also seek to reveal the broader causes and consequences of the refusal to acknowledge race and racism. In that sense, the volume has three broad goals: (1) to illuminate the actual racial dynamics within various fields of inquiry; (2) to show how the potential for addressing these issues is thwarted by colorblind approaches; and (3) to advance a comprehensive critique and modes of correction addressing the complicity of the university in fostering racial ignorance and oppression.
While editors may find it tempting to arrange this type of book by disciplinary categories, this volume is organized in an innovative way. The chapters themselves tend to follow disciplinary cleavages, focusing on areas like law, sociology, humanities, psychology, music studies, or education. But they are grouped into sections that reflect dimensions of the overall problem of colorblindness. These sections include, in order, “masks” that hide the reality of racism and racial inequality; “moves,” a term that refers to the practices that obscure racial reality and reproduce racism; and “resistance and transformation,” which is an appropriate heading for demonstrating modes of change but misses a great opportunity for alliteration.
In the opening chapters, the concept of colorblindness is exemplified in the legal and political system, wherein the idea of “race neutrality”—choosing to ignore the impacts of race and racism—has been advanced by predominantly white elites as a preferable, albeit ineffective, remedy to racial discrimination. The proliferation of such approaches to social, political, and legal problems has also meant the exclusion of racially conscious alternatives capable of producing social equity. As the book unfolds, the interdisciplinary roster of scholars documents parallel dynamics in areas of higher education and knowledge production. In particular, the authors show how race-conscious and race-critical approaches have routinely been marginalized, decentered, or silenced in matters where they hold the most explanatory power, promise, and relevance. Moreover, the text consistently places these disciplinary struggles in their social context. That is, colorblindness and white supremacy in other sectors of society are not only parallel but also connected to the evasion of racially conscious and critical perspectives in academic disciplines.
Setting the stage for this connection early on in the text, George Lipsitz cites an example from the field of U.S. history: “The historical archive about slavery and reconstruction has been structured in dominance by primary source documents placed in archives by people with power and by secondary sources that reflect the perspectives of the narrow range of people in society with sufficient wealth (and whiteness) to secure credentials from elite institutions” (pp. 44–45). In other words, the context of knowledge production reflects real structural relations of social inequality and racial oppression. The result is thus that the mainstream and dominant historical record is not only skewed to justify the interests of dominant groups but also incomplete. While claiming to be “neutral,” the paradigms critiqued throughout the chapters of the “Masks” section of the volume similarly naturalize their own social contexts and thereby decenter or outright exclude “alternative archives and knowledge traditions” (p. 45) that provide oppositional accounts grounded in the insights of subjugated groups.
While “masks” represent the arrangements, dominant ideologies, and power relations that obscure racial oppression throughout the disciplines, the section on “moves” sheds light on scholarly activities and practices that center colorblindness. It also begins to outline some interventions. The focus on active empirical and epistemological choice-making is insightful, but this section is a bit less thematically focused than the others. Problems highlighted here include musical studies’ fixation on classical music at the exclusion of other genres, colorblind generalizations about women and LGBTQIA people that ignore racialization, and dominant framings of the affirmative action debate.
The section “Resistance and Transformation” functions to explicitly answer the “so what” question that often accompanies such critiques. It encourages us to see, in our own daily lives and professional careers, that “the college campus is itself a racial project, a managerial training ground where racialized practices are learned and legitimated” (pp. 268–69). The discussions of effective pedagogy and agenda-setting in teaching and research are instructive. While I applaud the practicality of these suggestions for educators and researchers, I would have liked to see more insights into material and political struggles over the allocation of resources and strategies to change the policies and institutional structures of the university.
The volume’s main thesis is that colorblindness is a transdisciplinary problem that pervades the system of higher education, scholarly research, and pedagogy. Reading the chapters in tandem reveals that similar dynamics are at play across fields: elitism, the exclusion of marginalized group members, and perverse economic and political incentives to soften critiques of powerful groups. Toward that end, the volume functions as an intervention and a call to arms for interdisciplinary solidarity and struggles to reform knowledge production.
The book will likely find an eager audience in scholars, activists, policy-makers, students, and higher education professionals seeking to diagnose and reflect on racial inequities in their fields, the academy at large, and the broader society. Unfortunately, the text might be somewhat inaccessible to students who don’t already have an introductory grasp of these issues. However, I can especially see the text serving as a great fodder for discussion and response in graduate seminars and upper-level topical courses for undergraduates. Moreover, grappling with these critiques would undoubtedly serve future scholars well in avoiding the pitfalls and problems outlined in the text and becoming mindful of the function and impacts of research, teaching, and higher education. The disciplinary interventions covered in this volume are deserving of serious attention. They set an ambitious agenda and articulate an important vision. Familiarity with the arguments covered in this text can provide strategies and catalysts for future academic, pedagogical, and political efforts to unflinchingly reveal and address the centrality and durability of racial oppression.