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Harry Belafonte: 'You Can't Wish the Issue of Race Away - Colorlines

by Kai Wright

Listening to the conversation again this morning, I found his thoughts have grown still more relevant and urgent as this political moment drags on. “America prides itself on its compassion, but it is an image, not a practice,” he said—words that have rarely felt so true, as poverty hits record levels and our elected officials debate tax breaks for millionaires.

I’ve also spent a lot of time in the past couple of weeks in tough conversations about how and why it’s crucial to talk explicitly about race right now. Among progressives, the Occupy Wall Street movement has caught fire, but the racial injustice that fuels economic inequality hasn’t been a significant part of the discussion. Meanwhile, inside black America, President Obama’s recent speech at the Congressional Black Caucus has stirred heated debate about whether he can or should explicitly tackle the growing racial disparities in our economy . Here, Belafonte artfully sums up a perspective I’ve struggled to articulate in both spaces. “You can’t wish the issue of race away,” he said. “That’s the easiest thing in the world, to become part of a colorblind movement....

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"Colorblind" Word Twists Good Intentions (VIDEO)

by Channing Kennedy

Welcome to the first installment of our new video series, WORD!, in which we take a look at the language that controls the discourse around race. Today’s WORD! is:

“Colorblind”

People who claim to be colorblind must lead a charmed life. Constantly numbing their senses with a self-congratulatory grey blob of vagueness, ignorance and neglect, the colorblind have it made. Or do they? Turning a blind eye to the racism that people experience everyday may salve their conscience, but it won’t end racism.

For some documentation of “colorblindness” in action, check out this Afro-American Newspapers article about Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court .

about the WORD! series: Words. You cant escape them. They headline the evening news, buzz around the water cooler and blow up your cell. They invoke powerful images that convey values, beliefs and an understanding of how the world works. And when repeated, words shape how problems are defined and which solutions are pursued. Words. They whitewash. They blindside. They leave you seeing red. In this series, ColorLines Magazine looks at what we talk about when we talk about race.

Source: "Colorblind" Word Twists Good Intentions (VIDEO)

Colorblind An article Colorlines Magazine News

Why 'Diversity' Boosts Elites as Opportunity Falls

Huffington Post (blog) - Dec 31, 1969

It was liberals who were crooning "the Lord is Colorblind" alongside the Smothers Brothers on national television. But by 1991, when I published The Closest of Strangers, and in 1997, when I published Liberal Racism, conservatives were claiming that