Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sriram on September 01, 2015, 07:22:10 AM
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Hi everyone,
Here is a CNN article of today about how blind people who can't see the colour of the skin, can also be racist.
http://us.cnn.com/2015/08/30/health/blind-people-race/index.html
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A person may not have to "see color" to be racist. Some blind people, just like sighted people, make judgments about others based on their race, according to a new study.
The findings come from interviews conducted in person and over the phone with 25 people who were either born blind or severely visually impaired, or who lost their sight as children or adults. A researcher asked the participants, most of whom lived in the northeast United States, about whether they thought about race and also how it affected their feelings about a person.
The study found that blind people can still have racial stereotypes, but "in all cases it takes them longer to categorize people by race and there is more ambiguity," said Asia M. Friedman, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at University of Delaware, who conducted the study.
"Blind people understand race the same way as sighted people," said Osagie K. Obasogie, a professor of law at University of California Hastings College of Law who has researched how blind people think about race, but was not involved in Friedman's study.
Just like sighted people, blind people can conflate the concept of human variation -- differences in skin color and facial features -- with the qualities of a person, Obasogie said.
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Any views?
Sriram
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Does it surprise yoy, Sriram?
If so, why?
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BLIND PEOPLE IN 'BLIND PEOPLE TURN OUT TO BE PEOPLE' SHOCKER!!!
O.
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From cradle to grave people are subjected to a constant stream of opinions about race from others. Why should being blind be any sort of filter?
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From cradle to grave people are subjected to a constant stream of opinions about race from others. Why should being blind be any sort of filter?
Good question.
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I'm sure the blind people of India still stick to their caste.
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But how do we normally know someone is different? It is usually through their appearance. If some speaks the same language and behaves politely...why would anyone discriminate against them?
So...born blind people would have o reason to differentiate between people based on their colour or nose or lips or hair. As far as they are concerned everyone who sounds ok and behaves ok should be ok.
But if they also have racist feelings it means that it is far more basic and perhaps an evolutionary mechanism to keep different groups separated.
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But how do we normally know someone is different? It is usually through their appearance. If some speaks the same language and behaves politely...why would anyone discriminate against them?
So...born blind people would have o reason to differentiate between people based on their colour or nose or lips or hair. As far as they are concerned everyone who sounds ok and behaves ok should be ok.
But if they also have racist feelings it means that it is far more basic and perhaps an evolutionary mechanism to keep different groups separated.
Do you think blind people are ignorant of accents, syntax choices, slang-expressions, distinct smells of particular cuisines, (sub) cultural references...
O.
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But how do we normally know someone is different? It is usually through their appearance. If some speaks the same language and behaves politely...why would anyone discriminate against them?
So...born blind people would have o reason to differentiate between people based on their colour or nose or lips or hair. As far as they are concerned everyone who sounds ok and behaves ok should be ok.
But if they also have racist feelings it means that it is far more basic and perhaps an evolutionary mechanism to keep different groups separated.
Do you think blind people are ignorant of accents, syntax choices, slang-expressions, distinct smells of particular cuisines, (sub) cultural references...
O.
Well...I think you are being a little blind here...wittingly or unwittingly.
If two people are from New York...one white and another black...both educated and middle class....why would a blind person differentiate between the two and discriminate against one?
Accents, culture and cuisine are different even between white people...British, US, French, Italian, German, Australian etc....and blacks from different parts of Africa, US, UK etc.
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But how do we normally know someone is different? It is usually through their appearance. If some speaks the same language and behaves politely...why would anyone discriminate against them?
So...born blind people would have o reason to differentiate between people based on their colour or nose or lips or hair. As far as they are concerned everyone who sounds ok and behaves ok should be ok.
But if they also have racist feelings it means that it is far more basic and perhaps an evolutionary mechanism to keep different groups separated.
Do you think blind people are ignorant of accents, syntax choices, slang-expressions, distinct smells of particular cuisines, (sub) cultural references...
O.
Well...I think you are being a little blind here...wittingly or unwittingly.
If two people are from New York...one white and another black...both educated and middle class....why would a blind person differentiate between the two and discriminate against one?
Accents, culture and cuisine are different even between white people...British, US, French, Italian, German, Australian etc....and blacks from different parts of Africa, US, UK etc.
Plus the fact that blind people have learned to use their remaining senses to differentiate, and are considerably superior to sighted people that do not need the ability.
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Well...I think you are being a little blind here...wittingly or unwittingly.
If two people are from New York...one white and another black...both educated and middle class....why would a blind person differentiate between the two and discriminate against one?
Accents, culture and cuisine are different even between white people...British, US, French, Italian, German, Australian etc....and blacks from different parts of Africa, US, UK etc.
Sighted people make their ethnicity judgements on visual appearance, primarily, but for people without that cue they are looking for other indicators. Yes, people of varying ethnicities can have a multitude of accents, but the fact that they have been raised in societies with institutionalised racism means that, in the majority of cases, they will have adopted certain vocabulary and grammatic patterns that distinguish their speech as coming from particular sub-cultures.
We don't consciously pay attention to it, it just jars if we either get it from someone with the 'wrong' skin tone or don't hear it when we expect to. Blind people will be more attuned to those sorts of cues than we are.
O.
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Sriram,
It is easy to tell race from accents, vocabulary, phrasing etc, just listen to the radio. Black New Yorkers in general sound completely different to white New Yorkers.
Anyway you don't need to have seen, heard or been in the presence of anyone of a particular ethnicity to be prejudiced and discriminate against them. Race, ethnicity, class, caste are social constructions and our attitudes to them are as much due to conditioning as experience.
Evolution has given us an instinct for tribal loyalty, but these instincts can only be destructive in a world so much smaller than the one where we developed them.
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Well...I think you are being a little blind here...wittingly or unwittingly.
If two people are from New York...one white and another black...both educated and middle class....why would a blind person differentiate between the two and discriminate against one?
Accents, culture and cuisine are different even between white people...British, US, French, Italian, German, Australian etc....and blacks from different parts of Africa, US, UK etc.
Sighted people make their ethnicity judgements on visual appearance, primarily, but for people without that cue they are looking for other indicators. Yes, people of varying ethnicities can have a multitude of accents, but the fact that they have been raised in societies with institutionalised racism means that, in the majority of cases, they will have adopted certain vocabulary and grammatic patterns that distinguish their speech as coming from particular sub-cultures.
We don't consciously pay attention to it, it just jars if we either get it from someone with the 'wrong' skin tone or don't hear it when we expect to. Blind people will be more attuned to those sorts of cues than we are.
O.
Also, sighted people are used to seeing people whose accents don't match their skin colour - we not only hear a London or Brum accent but see that the person speaking isn't white. We see 'people like us' around us all the time and dont notice the difference in race because they are doing what we are doing - commuting, shopping, holding hands, playing with their kids...unsighted people never have that experience.
Now imagine not having that ordinary day-to-day experience of knowing without thinking about it that 'they' are no different from 'us'. I can imagine that I'd pick up ideas about Islam and Asian people from the news media, black people from the news and rap culture.