What is Colorblindness? Most would agree that it’s the inability to see colors in the usual sense. Merriam-Webster defines it as affected with partial or total inability to distinguish one or more chromatic colors; insensitive or oblivious; and not influenced by differences of race. My better half embodies the first and most common definition as he has the inability to see red and green colors correctly. It’s fun and frustrating shopping for colors of any sort together but because of his “defect” he can see sharper at night than I or an full color seeing individual can. This ability to traverse two worlds visually is extremely fascinating but no the point of my story. As part of the Hispanic and American cultures, I also traverse two worlds, both linguistically, but also culturally.
Some of my Hispanic culture bleeds into my American patterns and likewise my American side into my Hispanic habits. As a child I was made well aware that I would have to maintain separation, integration and mutual respect for both cultures if I was going to succeed in life. Biology and Science struck my interest, and so I pursued my passion through classes like cellular function and genetics. Pairing the knowledge of chromosomes with my cultural anthropology lectures I soon realized (and verified) that there is in fact no such thing as race. We categorize dogs into breeds based on traits that we encouraged, but every dog can interbreed with another making them a single species; dog. Humans are no different. The difference is that we humans would never call ourselves by a breed, so we constructed a new word, race.
I have a friend who is African American, and carries in him a recessive gene for a very rare (statistically)French disease. The disease and his race don’t really matter, but the combination of it fascinates me. It’s a defect that most likely arose out of the royal gene pool because only about 8% of the entire French population will ever express this gene and here is this guy, born in the USA with it. Fascinating!!! Human biology is wonderful because it shows us that we are in fact one people with varying CULTURES.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m insensitive when it comes to my words. I don’t choose to be, however I would rather be frank than dishonest and sometimes I’m oblivious to the impact of them. I see masses of people parading around in solidarity as a culture for many reasons. A sports victory celebration anywhere in the US, St, Patrick’s Day Parades, Gay Pride in San Francisco, Justice for Trayvon in Florida, or a Cesear Chavez March in Los Angeles; all reasons to amass together for a single occasion. What happens though when a culture of any sort becomes not only defensive, but outright violent about their shared cultural pride? I choose not to attend these gatherings for just this reason. I like to stick to smaller local things like Fair Parades and local seasonal events because no one wants to mess up their home town. My frankness stems from my utter hatred of cultural singularity. I want to see all cultures being able to meld and embrace one another’s beauty, not point out the other’s flaw.
Blanket statements that single out one culture as x, y, or z, do no good to advance progress, rather condemning poor behavior does. All cultures have rules that govern life and how one is to interact with society, sadly some cultures do not. Sure we can go on about how your culture struggles more or how I have an advantage because… But we’re not, because everyone has some sort of advantage over someone else that makes them unique. You may be able bodied and therefore have an advantage over someone who’s disabled, but that doesn’t stop either of you from success if there is the effort. I try to live my life never seeing the color of people, but their culture, and always condemning poor behavior. We are all one color, and I am colorblind.
