Colorblindness

1. What is racial color blindness?

In an article written by Carmen Nobel, Michael I. Norton and his colleagues of Harvard Business School, they conducted research on how to prevent racial discrimination within a business organization. They came up with a term known as colorblindness, which relates to ignoring racial differences when creating company policies and decisions. Many individuals believe that this is an effective way to eliminate discrimination, yet according to Norton and his colleague’s research, it is almost impossible to ignore these differences regarding the color of someone’s appearance and skin color in a workplace. So one question that arises is, “since there are so many races, which race is considered acceptable?” Eduardo Bonilla-Silva infers “white supremacy” or “whiteness” as the definition of what is known as the visible form of the dominant racial group. This is not certainly not the first time that anyone has heard of this simply because in America, upper class white elitists are the epitome of successful businessmen.

2. Why, according to these authors, is color blindness problematic?

Although color blindness is a strategic goal to ignore racial classification within a workforce, many people believe it to be ineffective. In fact, the most conflicting approach is that it is actually easy to notice racial differences when socially interacting with others. Racial Colorblindness is an article constructed by psychologist Evan P. Apfelbaum and his colleagues. The article analyzes the various types of colorblindness, which include interpersonal, educational, organizational, legal, and other types of colorblindness. One example given in the article illustrates why colorblindness is just a myth and does not exist in the world of business. The authors conducted a research that involved a group of white people that were asked to guess which of the given photos a partner was holding. Surprisingly, all of the participants that were challenged...