Racism & Equality
How Do Blind People Perceive Race and Racism?
A look into the social effects of racism on those who can’t see it.
Imagine an alternate world, where humans live, and the vast majority possess six senses. You are born into this world, missing that sixth sense. All you’d have for reference is other people’s description of it. People would ask you lots of stupid questions about how you function without it.
Imagine further that a major social issue, something as significant as racism, was most commonly perceived through that 6th spectrum.
How well do you think you’d understand it? Would most people write you off and assume you didn’t get it? You probably get where I’m going with this.
So much of human interaction is affected by race. Meanwhile, race is mostly a hollow concept in science. More plainly, it’s just another label, a made-up thing we use to sort each other into boxes. Perhaps, like blind people, we shouldn’t see race at all. Yet even that assumption is problematic, in more ways than one would think.
How does a born-blind person perceive race and racism?
