Blindness

Came across this TED talk by Hughes today. The talk was neither strident nor unreasonable. The general premise is that our policies should be ‘colourblind’. Meaning that the policies should be indifferent to race. And that policies should be based on class instead, where the target groups, black and Hispanic, are over represented in the poorer classes. It is an interesting 13 minutes. Now of course this might not be a popular view in certain circles.

Instead of a reasonable debate of race versus class as a driver for policy. Curious. Coleman Hughes gives some history and some of the perspectives he had with TED posting his talk and the reasons for this here. To me, TED is not coming off in a good light.

The word ‘colourblind’ seems to be used in two senses, one is the in the sense that policies should not discriminate, which I tend to side with. And the other is that people to not consider or perhaps notice people’s colour. Of course the second is nigh on impossible for most of us.

I wonder if the second sense is even desirable? When I meet say a black person, it is only when they speak I get a glimpse of their formative environment. Is the accent from North America, the Caribbean, the UK, or Africa, a Latino accent or European perhaps with a hint of French. Of course, I’ll get to know more about the person when we discuss the Prime Minister, football, family, philosophy, religion, or what sort of day they had. I am certainly not ‘colourblind’ when it comes to race. Also, I am not blind to politics, sports, education, and the like.