Colorblind By Isabel Wilkerson

A young, white boy, just four years old, turned and asked his mother “Who is the tan man?” His mother happened to be Jodi Picoult, an author and journalist for Time Magazine. She was completely caught off guard by the question and answered her son in the way she thought was best. She says of her response, “I told my son that although people came in different shades, we’re all the same. I told him I was colorblind, and he should be too.” Picoult’s answer to her son was clearly a result of the way she was brought up and the knowledge he had. She describes that she grew up surrounded by white, upper-middle class people, and she could count the number of African American students at her school of over two thousand on one hand. Reflecting on her …show more content…
Isabel Wilkerson, a journalist for The New York Times, reported on a survey taken in South Side Chicago neighborhoods in 1992. The two neighborhoods being surveyed were Mount Greenwood, a predominantly white neighborhood, and Roseland, a predominantly black neighborhood. In this survey, more than 100 residents of the two Chicago neighborhoods were interviewed by reporters of their own race. Wilkerson details that the subjects “form[ed] a picture of divided worlds where race and discrimination are defining facts of daily life for blacks and somebody else's problem for whites.” The fact that white people were shown to believe that discrimination was not their problem shows a clear disregard for what occurs in their very own city. They did not care about this issue because they isolated themselves from people outside of their race. However, it is clear that this issue should matter to everyone, as shown by the responses from black residents. As Joe Feagin, a sociology professor at the University of Florida puts it, "Being white in America means never having to think about it.” But this inherent privilege is exactly the problem. Even if white people do not have to think about being white, they should think about it. The reason they do not is because they were not taught to consider their privilege and imagine what it is like to be part of a racial minority. Discrimination is something that black people deal with on a daily basis, and it is completely senseless for white people to not be educated on it. When white people are only surrounded by white people, they are not able to learn about and develop an understanding of another race. Without racial understanding, it is nearly impossible to develop sympathy for the greater issue of racial discrimination. A clear example of this lack of understanding was displayed through Mount Greenwood resident, Mrs. O'Connor. While being surveyed, she stated that It