VINDICATION!!

I explained my reasons for calling this blog "Seeing Race" in this post. I concluded that:

When my students say that they don't "see race", they are really telling me that they don't see the continued prejudice and discrimination suffered by minority groups.

It turns out that Brendesha Tynes, a professor of Educational Psychology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois, has conducted research that agrees with my opinion. (ha! love it when that happens.) You can read all about it here.

Choice quotes:

“If you subscribe to a color-blind racial ideology, you don’t think that race or racism exists, or that it should exist,” Tynes said. “You are more likely to think that people who talk about race and racism are the ones who perpetuate it. You think that racial problems are just isolated incidents and that people need to get over it and move on. You’re also not very likely to support affirmative action, and probably have a lower multi-cultural competence.”

AND

“What we found is that the color-blind ideal commonly socialized and valued among whites may actually be detrimental to race relations on college campuses.” [and everywhere else, I would add]

Me and science, we're like this.