The Importance Of The Burch Questions

It is hard to explain a disability that not everyone can see. Unless I’m wearing one red sock and one green sock, there’s not a lot that people can do to prepare themselves for my red-green colorblindness unless I let them know about it immediately. What’s more, even when people do know, they never seem to truly understand. The questions they ask, even, prove this to me more than anything. I always like to refer to the questions I get as the “Burch Questions” in reference to a skit done by Ashly and Anthony Burch for their show “Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’?” These questions are things like: “So is everything in black and white for you?” “You can see through things that are red or green?” “What is Christmas like?” (Burch and Burch 00:25 – 00:50). So, in the spirit of getting all of these questions out of the way: no, the world is not black and white, I can see red and green—it’s just tan, Christmas looks the same to me as it’s always looked, painting something red doesn’t make it invisible to me, and there is no such thing as a color-seeing eye dog (00:20 – 00:50). …show more content…
And it’s so incredibly difficult to be able to explain my view to someone. Color is one of those fantastic things that people can’t really explain easily without either using another color or trying to point to something that’s the exact same color. There is no exact, defining term for what “red” or “green” is, so it’s impossible for me to describe how it’s changed. I think, chiefly, the reason that these odd questions or misconceptions come up is specifically because of how rarely people actually see any evidence of colorblindness outside of direct communication—sort of an “out of sight, out of mind” event. It’s just one of those things that’s easy to forget about, even for me, and I have to deal with it each