On Being a "Color Blind" Reader...

Hey, so if you popped in here because you're a fantasy reader who's been wondering if my novel Acacia: The War with the Mein is worth your hard-earned dollars I've got good news for you. It is. There are many posts here that talk about it and give good news and talk about fantasy stuff. This post, however, comes shaped by another aspect of my life on this planet. It's one of those race-related posts.

It came about responding to a comment that Larry from OF Blog of the Fallen made about reader responses to the interview I did with John Sclazi. I enjoyed reading most of the comments, and found some of them wonderfully encouraging and supportive. But, as with any thing race-related, there was a mixture of different opinions.

Larry's comment was, "After reading some of the comments at Scalzi's blog, I cannot help but notice how many readers unwittingly underscored your point about the acknowledgment of color/race by claiming that they were "color blind." I remember quite well taking a diversity class in a local university's social work program and being confronted with the fact that being "color blind" is quite a privileged position to be in the first place."


Yes. I hear you. On race issues people often "unwittingly" say things in denying racial concerns that actually prove how valid those concerns actually are. The "color blind" thing... Okay, before I say much let me make it clear that when I talk about this issue I'm not out to make any personal attacks. I'm just offering a perspective informed by a lifetime of inhabiting the skin I do. It's about asking folks to consider that they might not have all the answers - and that they might not have thought the entire thing through as much as they think.


My wife, for example, is Scottish. And I don't mean just that her surname is Scottish but she actually was born and raised in Des Moines... No, she's really Scottish, accent and all, red-haired, born in the Shetland Isles and raised in the Highlands and Islands. I met her in Edinburgh, and when I brought her across to America a year later she was new to all of our particularly American racial issues.

Now we've been together ten years. We've lived here and abroad and are raising two mixed race kids. Just yesterday she was commenting about all this by admitting that she had been and would likely have remained clueless about the myriad ways race impacts people of color's lives on a daily basis. She didn't know a thing before. With her open mind she'd likely have embraced the notion of being "color blind" - without realizing how misguided it is.

Fast forward ten years. Ten years of living with me, of discussing issues with me, of watching race affect my career, of reading about black history and reading black literature, ten years of pondering what our intermingled racial legacies mean for our children. AFTER all that, she admits, she understands things so much more now. Part of what that means is that she has no problem understanding the hand race plays in so, so many things. She knows just how racist the workings of the world are in ways that she had no inkling of before. She also admits that even now she has a ton to learn and knows that she'll never really understand the world as viewed from beneath dark skin.


Contrast that to the good people (most often white, I'd wager) that say they're "color blind" and that all this seeing racism in everything is just silliness. I think that most of them say that with the best of intentions, but every time I hear it I'm curious about a few things.

Small test... I'd be interested to ask each "color blind" reader when was the last time they read something by a black author. They might shrug and say, "I don't know. Remember, I don't pay attention to an author's race." My translation of that - they probably haven't read a black author since a college lit course, because if they had they'd KNOW they had. They'd remember it, and likely they'd have learned things from it.

Okay, second question... For white readers that shop at Borders - when was the last time you went browsing for a novel in the "African-American" literature section? They'd likely respond with, "The what? There's not an African-American literature section. Black history section, sure, but..." To which I respond that yes, yes there is a section of Borders - usually a small corner about a shelf and half wide - where the vast majority of fiction by black authors is shelved. It's where Alice Walker goes. It's where you'll most readily find Toni Morison. It's where I found Edward P Jones' The Known World for the first time. (After he won the Pulitzer and MacArthur "Genius" Grant and about every other literary award possible Borders might have saw fit to move him into the regular literature section. Might. But he began in AFAM.)

Honestly, this section of the store really exists, and all you have to do to get into it is to be black (not even American, just black at all).

I know all of this because that's where my first two novels (Gabriel's Story and Walk Through Darkness) go - when they're actually stocked at all. Yes, Pride of Carthage is in general fiction and Acacia is in fantasy, but my publisher had to push hard for the big chains to see the work instead of the color of its author. I know this. They told me this. And they said one of many reasons to get out of that tiny section was that it would immediately mean the stores would buy more copies, display them where people might see them - and therefore we’d sell more copies.

Does all of this sound like a racist conspiracy theory? Well, I can see how it would if it isn't part of your daily life. But it is part of my life and career to push through these boundaries and have my books placed within the general population. I know it. My publisher knows it. The bookstore executives and buyers and managers know it. The only folks that may not know that race is very much considered at all stages of publishing are a great many of the customers themselves.

So, to the "color blind" reader that has no idea they have NO CHANCE of coming across most black writers in the center of the store... I argue that the fact that you don't read with an awareness of color means that you're being a willing accomplice to institutional segregation. In that regard, being "color blind" also means being blind to a host of inequities, perspectives and realities that you would be able to see if you chose to acknowledge color and to see how much it affects all our lives. Doesn’t make being “color blind” seem so enlightened, does it?

So what's the remedy? Part of it, in this case, would be to put away that blindness and see the colors! When I come up with a reading list for a course I make sure it's racially diverse, and gender balanced, and I try to remember that we don't all have the same sexual preferences and that should be represented to. Do I have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to come up with good titles? Of course not. There's great literature written in all these perspectives and more. Don't be blind to them. Seek out diversity and you'll realize how rich it is, and how important it is.

By the way, my bookshelf isn't color blind. That's why I've included photos of it throughout this post. It's a rich tapestry of all sorts of writing from all sorts of places. It's literary and genre, white and black, European and African and Asian, straight and gay, old and new, etc, etc... I'm proud it, and I know it didn't get that way by accident, or chance. It's the result of many, many conscious decisions on my family's part. I think that's the only way we can know that we're doing the best we can to be racially sensitive and aware and informed. We have to act - and buy and read - consciously. And it's worth it. It really is.

So take the blinders off. You many find it's a very good thing.
(This is just my fiction collection, by the way. I've got the non-fiction in another room, respectfully granted the same sort of space and love.)