Do Blind People See Race? Social, Legal, and Theoretical Considerations

Abstract

Although the meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries, one thread of thought unifies almost all of the many diverging perspectives: a largely unquestioned belief that race is self-evident and visually obvious, defined largely by skin color, facial features, and other visual cues. This suggests that “seeing race” is an experience largely unmediated by broader social forces; we simply know it when we see it. It also suggests that those who cannot see are likely to have a diminished understanding of race. But is this empirically accurate?I examine these questions by interviewing people who have been totally blind since birth about race and compare their responses to sighted individuals. I not only find that blind people have as significant an understanding of race as anyone else and that they understand race visually, but that this visual understanding of race stems from interpersonal and institutional socializations that profoundly shape their racial perceptions. These findings highlight how race and racial thinking are encoded into individuals through iterative social practices that train people to think a certain way about the world around them. In short, these practices are so strong that even blind people, in a conceptual sense, “see” race. Rather than being self-evident, these interviews draw attention to how race becomes visually salient through constitutive social practices that give rise to visual understandings of racial difference for blind and sighted people alike. This article concludes with a discussion of these findings' significance for understanding the role of race in law and society.

“There are Two People at Work That I'm Fairly Certain are Black”: Uncertainty and Deliberative Thinking in Blind Race Attribution

“…Conversely, contrary to Obasogie's () finding that even people born blind experience race visually, while all nine respondents in my sample who had been blind since birth or early childhood knew about phenotypic race cues, all also felt their experience of race diverged in significant ways from appearance‐based meanings. Obasogie argues that his blind‐from‐birth respondents understand their nonvisual sensory experiences of race as proxies for the “real” meaning of race, which is visual.…”

“…Particularly in everyday sighted interactions, race is usually accessed and defined as a collection of visually available phenotypic cues (Jones 2000;Brunsma and Rockquemore 2001;Lewis 2004;Obasogie 2010Obasogie , 2014. The concept of "color," which is used instead of race in Brazil and elsewhere, is also inherently visual (Telles 2006), and research shows that skin color, independent of racial identity, is tied to patterns of stratification and discrimination in the United States (Hochschild and Weaver 2007;Faught and Hunter 2012).…”

Conceptualizing color-evasiveness: using dis/ability critical race theory to expand a color-blind racial ideology in education and society

“…Calling the racial ideology of refusing to acknowledge race color-blindness also implies that racism is perpetuated only through sight and resisted through sightlessness (Obasogie 2010). However, racism is multimodal and is not limited to only one modality.…”

Becoming a (Pan)ethnic Attorney: How Asian American and Latino Law Students Manage Dual Identities

“…This racialized integration into mainstream America speaks directly to the social and cultural value of race, which complements critical race theory. Ideologies and stereotypes about race are socially transmitted with deep roots in American culture that even blind individuals “see” race (Obasogie ). The strategies used by Asian American and Latino law students to fulfill a sense of panethnic duty also serve as an assertion of racial ownership.…”