Description: Colorblindness has become an integral part of the national conversation on race in America. Given the assumptions behind this influential metaphor--that being blind to race will lead to racial equality--it's curious that, until now, we have not considered if or how the blind "see" race. Most sighted people assume that the answer is obvious: they don't, and are therefore incapable of racial bias--an example that the sighted community should presumably follow. In Blinded by Sight, Osagie K. Obasogie shares a startling observation made during discussions with people from all walks of life who have been blind since birth: even the blind aren't colorblind--blind people understand race visually, just like everyone else. Ask a blind person what race is, and they will more than likely refer to visual cues such as skin color. Obasogie finds that, because blind people think about race visually, they orient their lives around these understandings in terms of who they are friends with, who they date, and much more. In Blinded by Sight, Obasogie argues that rather than being visually obvious, both blind and sighted people are socialized to see race in particular ways, even to a point where blind people "see" race. So what does this mean for how we live and the laws that govern our society? Obasogie delves into these questions and uncovers how color blindness in law, public policy, and culture will not lead us to any imagined racial utopia.
Review Quotes: "As Osagie Obasogie demonstrates in his brilliant new book, Blinded by Sight, new references to race as anchored in our DNA have in no way diminished our credence in the phenotypic reality and obviousness of racial categories. This first book is extremely ambitious--and successfully so. It has a startlingly original research design (involving interviews with blind people about race) that is based on a rare ability to question what seems obvious--in this case, the notion that blind people can't know race. Moreover, it effortlessly extends what could have been simply a fascinating empirical exercise to a deeper meditation on how our preconceptions about racial difference structure our laws and therefore the most fundamental processes of inequality and social outcomes. As if this were not enough, Blinded by Sight is also a methodological treatise and scholarly call to arms . . . This text is highly learned one that takes aim at a staggeringly 'big picture' . . . [This] book is written in a very fluid and clear style, and its arguments are illuminated by evocative quotations from interviews with blind people."--Ann Morning