"I Don't See Color" Is Not the Flex You Think It Is

I want to say something plainly, because I think plain language is the only honest way to say it: "I don't see color" is not a neutral phrase. It is not a kind phrase. Saying it is not actually about kindness at all. It's a way of opting out of a conversation while sounding like a good person.

Here's the test I'd ask you to apply the next time you hear it, or the next time you feel it rising in your own mouth: who actually gets to say this? Not seeing color is not available to the person who experiences the consequences of their color every day — in how they're followed through a store, spoken to at work, or perceived by a teacher who's already decided something about them before they've said a word. "Not seeing color" is a privilege, and it belongs exclusively to people for whom race has never been a cost.

Researchers have a name for this way of thinking: colorblind racial ideology* (CBRI). It shows up in two related forms — one where people insist they don't notice race at all ("color-evasion"), and another where people acknowledge race exists but insists it shouldn't matter to how anyone is treated. Both perspectives rest on the same premise: that the best way to end discrimination is to stop acknowledging difference.

It sounds reasonable, but it is not a feasible way to handle the matter. Refusing to see race doesn't make racism disappear — it just makes it harder to name, harder to interrupt, and much harder to teach a child to recognize when it's happening to them or to someone they love.

Researchers studying this pattern in classrooms have found that white teachers frequently adopt colorblind approaches, leaning on the idea that treating every student the same is sufficient. It isn't. Treating children the same while ignoring the different ways they're perceived and disciplined doesn't produce equal outcomes — it produces the same disparities, dressed up as fairness.

Last week, I wrote about adultification bias — the well-documented pattern where Black children are perceived as older, less innocent, and more responsible for their own circumstances than they actually are. There's another study that ties these two ideas together directly.

Researchers examined* how colorblind ideology shaped the way social service providers evaluated a Black family in a parent-child interaction they recorded in a closed test environment. The more strongly a provider believed that differences should be ignored, the more likely they were to perceive the children in that interaction as aggressive and out of control.

Colorblindness didn't make these evaluators see the children more fairly. It made them see the children more harshly, while giving the evaluator plausible deniability about why. This gets even more urgent for a specific group of parents reading this: those raising Black or biracial children, whether through birth, blended families, or adoption.

Researchers who study transracial adoption have found that parents who raise their children with a colorblind approach — "we don't see color, we just see our child" — often leave those children under-prepared for the racism they will inevitably encounter outside the home, and can even do damage inside it. Adoption researcher Gina Miranda Samuels has described how colorblindness in this context risks quietly teaching a child that something very visible and unchangeable about them is a thing to be overlooked, even by the people meant to love them most.

Research from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute has found something important here too: it isn't transracial parenting itself that creates difficulty for children. It's how the family handles conversations about race once that child is in it. Families who acknowledge race, connect their children to their own heritage and community, and prepare them honestly for what they'll face tend to raise children with a stronger, more secure sense of identity than families who default to "love sees no color."

You don't have to be raising a Black or biracial child for this to apply to you. If you're teaching your non-Black child to move through the world "not seeing color," you are teaching them to be unable to recognize bias when it's happening right in front of them.

A child who has been taught to see color, and to understand what that difference has historically meant, is a child equipped to notice when something is wrong. A child taught not to see color at all is a child who will watch harm happen and have no preparation for recognizing it, calling it out, or worse, they will become a person who inflicts that harm.

Good intentions wearing the mask of neutrality aren't good enough anymore, they never have been. Seeing color is not “teaching hate” and it is not problematic. The problem is what we do, or refuse to do, in interactions with those who do not look like us.

*Sources:

Okah, E. (2021). "Colorblind racial ideology is associated with the use of race in medical decision‐making." Health Services Research.

Williams, J., Elias, M. J., & Fletcher, J. (2018). "Color-blind ideology and perceptions of minority children." Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment.

If you're reading this and you're a non-Black parent, teacher or caregiver ready to go deeper into your anti-racism journey, download my free guide, "Raise a Human Being, Not a Racist Prick"​

About the writer:

Chanel is a Black queer writer, mother and scholar whose work centers personal narrative, spiritual deconstruction, and cultural commentary. She writes about spirituality, decolonization, anti-racism, self love, and creative community.