Color Blind

"I don't see color, I treat all people the same!"
If you're white, you probably learned this in school, and even said it on occasion, patting yourself on the back for being a good ally to persons of color (POC).
If you're a POC, you probably sigh heavily every time you hear or read it.

I'll be up front, I'm white and I was raised in an area that had two, maybe three families of color, so I'm not the absolute best person to talk about race issues. However, it's obviously not one I can skip over, especially not during Black History Month. With that in mind, let me attempt to discuss this color blindness we white people are so fond of talking about.

In elementary school and beyond, we're taught loads of things that seem like really good ideas on the surface, but not so good in practice. Not seeing color is one of them. I'm sure some white dude was sitting around, trying to figure out how to be a better ally, or maybe just how to teach diversity in school, and he figured out the best way to do that was... to not actually talk about diversity at all.
Sure, treating everyone the same is a nice sentiment, but that's not actually what "not seeing color" is, is it? You're not treating everyone the same regardless of their skin color, you're outright denying the experiences they've had because of their skin color.
If you don't see color, you don't have to talk about how your black friends get followed around stores to make sure they aren't stealing. You don't have to acknowledge your Latino friends getting denied for jobs based on their name alone. You get to continue on asking your Asian friend for math help without actually knowing whether they're good at math, because not seeing color means you get to ignore your own biases to and stereotypes about POC, and all the microagressions society stuffed into your head. If you don't see color, you get to pretend racism is gone, or that it will magically disappear if you ignore it.
It's a pleasant world, really. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. It's a lot more comfortable to pretend that institutionalized racism has been wiped out in America, and it's nice to never consider any problematic things you may be doing and any privileges you may have. But we need to snap out of this dream world, because our fellow humans do have different skin colors and do face discrimination because of it, and our blindness is allowing their suffering.

While we each need to do our best to understand the issues our brothers and sisters and non-binary folks face, we also need to get our educators to teach race differently. In my personal experience, Black History Month always seemed to talk about discrimination against POC as though it ended in the sixties or early seventies. We're given one month each year to learn about black people in America, and each year I heard the same blurbs about slavery, George Washington Carver, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr. As important as these subjects are they are not the entirety of black history, but a drop in the bucket of important people and race issues. I never learned about White Flight, or about how we dehumanized black people in order to justify enslaving them. I never learned why it was important to read Maya Angelou's works, or what microagressions  and privileges were. Heck, I still haven't learned enough about important black figures in history to list many more than I already have (a failing on my part, that I aim to fix during this Black History Month).
But I never cared about any of this in high school, because, I mean, I wasn't racist or anything, and wasn't racism practically dead in America, anyway? I believe it's a failing of our education system that I was allowed to graduate high school and enter the "real world" thinking that.
So how about this Black History Month, how about we actually try to learn about black history, beyond just a vague "sorry about that" gesture toward slavery and Jim Crow Laws. How about we step out of our comfort zones and try to recognize our privileges, and challenge our stereotypical ideas? Those are small, but important steps in becoming better allies to POC.


Also, sorry to all POC for not really directing anything at you in this post, and mainly directing it all at white people, but, again, I feel hardly qualified to talk about such issues in any other context beyond "get your shit together, white people."

Meritocracy

Meritocracy is the idea that people should be awarded based on their abilities and work ethic. The idea being, the more work you put in and the more abilities you possess, the more you should succeed in life.
As an ideology, it sounds wonderful. Maybe it's just my American upbringing, but that's how I thought the world worked and how I thought the world should work for the entirety of my adolescence, and really the idea is still clinging on in the recesses of my mind.
The issue becomes when we go from thinking that's how the world should work, to that's how the world does work. I find this to be an especially prominent idea in America (though, truth be told, I haven't traveled to other countries to figure out how it works elsewhere).
Often, throughout political debates and article comment sections, you hear and see people arguing that people with less off are just lazy or stupid or somehow don't deserve success. After all, their cousin or sister or aunt was able to raise two kids by themselves while working three jobs and going through nursing school! Whether or not those commenters or politicians are exaggerating a bit, people get this idea that their personal story outweighs countless experiences of others' and studies that say the contrary.
This is where the problem lies. When people believe so much in meritocracy, that they cannot lend a compassionate hand to those less fortunate because "obviously" they are just trying to get a government check without working, or "obviously" they're just too lazy to cook healthy meals at home, or "obviously" they're not searching hard enough for a job or they'd have one, or "obviously" if they didn't want to work for minimum wage, they'd be going back to school to get a better job.
Maybe those so clinging onto the "reality" of meritocracy do so because it's disheartening to imagine a world without it, or maybe they need to believe that their own hard work will keep them safe from financial troubles and failure. However, how much more improved would the world be if we would all stop believing everyone is rewarded based on merit, and instead work to setting such a system in place, however impossible it may be?