Racial Color Blindness - Essay Example

Racial colorblindness involves actively attempting to ignore racial differences when making decisions and enacting policies in an organization (Nobel 1). Racial colorblindness has recently been endorsed and adopted by many organizations as a strategy for preventing prejudice and discrimination.

2.0. Problem with Racial Colorblindness
The issue concerning color blindness is however problematic. According to Nobel (1), attempting to overcome racial discrimination or prejudice by ignoring race may not be an effective strategy. Nobel (1) further notes that in several instances, racial color blindness actually perpetuates a bias. Nobel (1) suggests that experimental research shows that individuals who actively avoid the race subject are the ones perceived as racially biased. This is a stark contrast to the racial colorblindness logic and policies that an individual’s ability to fail to even notice race ensures that the individual cannot act in a racist manner. Nobel (1) further adds that the problem with the notion is that people naturally notice racial differences without regarding their employer’s policy.

On the other hand, Apfelbaum et al. (205) acknowledge the problem with the racial color blindness approach. Although the authors acknowledge that other studies have questioned this approach, they attempt to document the implications and practice of color blindness in a wide variety of interpersonal, organizational, educational, societal, and legal contexts. The authors agree that multiculturalism, which is often proposed as a strategy for dealing with racial prejudice, is an effective strategy. However, the authors contend that even though multiculturalism is effective in certain instances, it has its own shortcomings (Apfelbaum et al. 205).

3.0. Relationship with Public Policy
Racial color blindness has significant relevance with respect to public policy in terms of the educational context, organizational, legal, and societal color blindness. According to Apfelbaum (206), the colorblind approach is manifested in various levels of the U.S. educational system. It is reflected in how districts are allowed to regulate the diversity of their educational institutions, reinforced by standard curricula that exhibit a homogenous cultural identity but fail to address group differences. It is also routinely portrayed by teachers who seek to model equality in the classrooms by emphasizing that “race does not matter” (Apfelbaum et al. 206). Several contemporary organizations are also endorsing the racial color blindness approach because of the challenge recruitment and management of an increasingly culturally diverse workforce.

Apfelbaum et al. (206) note that the perceived utility in the approach is based on its capacity to shift employees’ attention from their cultural and racial differences to a normalized or unified organizational goal or identity. In the legal context, color blindness-in the recent past- has developed into a representation of the legal standard against which acts of prejudice or bias are judged. This is further exemplified by the perception that no kind of race-based consideration is acceptable in a lawful egalitarian society (Apfelbaum et al. 207). Read More