Conceptualizing Color-Evasiveness: Using Disability Critical Race Theory to Expand Notions of Color Blindness

• In Event: Disability Critical Race Theory and Conceptualizations of Place and Space: Working Toward Intersectional Understanding

Abstract

Objectives: The term color-blindness has historically been conceptualized as, “race is irrelevant” (Gotanda, 1991, p. 268). Efforts not to “see” race insinuate that recognizing race is problematic (Guinier & Torres, 2002). Color-blindness as an ideology has been critiqued through a Critical Race Theory lens in society (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001); in legal studies (Gotanda, 1991); and in education (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), to name a few. Though the conceptualization of color-blindness has moved many fields forward in efforts to discuss racism, the inherent ableism in the term has also limited discourse and remedies of societal inequities (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). We argue that using a Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) conceptualization, color-evasiveness will allow for broader understanding of systemic inequities and potential solutions (Frankenberg, 1993; Stubblefield, 2005).

Theoretical framework: DisCrit allows an intersectional framing and therefore a comprehensive analysis of the ways racism and ableism are impacted by color-blindness while simultaneously exploring how the term’s utility is also limited (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013; Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 1995). Beginning with the understanding that racism and ableism are mutually constitutive, DisCrit recognizes the importance of the term in the fight for equity but also examines how expansive notions of race neutrality can be advanced when using the term color-evasiveness as an alternative (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Erevelles, 2011).

Methods/modes of inquiry: Beginning with the notion of color-blindness as a discursive tool for those in power to deny the salience of race, the authors trace the intellectual lineage of the term, and resistance to it, to ancestors such as W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, and Frederick Douglas. Moving into the present, the authors will explore the ways color-blindness as a concept has moved fields forward describing ways racial inequities are explained and perpetuated through nonracial dynamics (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). The term “colorblindness” conflates lack of eyesight with lack of knowing. Said differently, blindness is equated with ignorance. However, blindness is not ignorance; in fact, blindness provides unique ways of understanding the world to which sighted people have no access. So blind people are knowers. Alternatively, color-evasiveness resists the urge to position blind people as deficit (Frankenberg, 1993; Stubblefield, 2005). Moreover, color-evasiveness acknowledges that there is an active evasion occurring when people refuse to discuss race in the face of racial inequities.

Conclusions: Racial discourse and literacies can be advanced when examined intersectionally (Annamma et al., 2013). The shift to color-evasiveness allows for both comprehensively situating the term color-blindness historically as well as thoughtfully considering how to move the term forward expansively.

Scholarly significance: Much of the literature suggests that a critique of color-blindness was one that was desperately needed to reject ways racism was and is perpetuated. What remains a theoretical question is: How can intersectional conceptualization of color-evasiveness move the study of inequities forward? Ultimately, this work aligns with AERA’s aims to harness “hope and determination that research can strengthen public education” (p. 1). This work seeks to do this by using intersectional framing in order to strengthen our intersectional literacy.

Authors

• Subini Ancy Annamma, The University of Kansas

• Darrell Jackson, University of Wyoming