blindspots

the past couple days i have been thinking about the concepts and connections of colorblindness and pansexuality. my guess is this will come out a little convoluted though, so hang on until the end.

i don’t believe in colorblindness, but i hear so many people saying it has advantages (not necessarily what the advantages are, just that advantages exist) and how they believe in it. the lack of explanation makes me wonder: what exactly are the advantages to colorblindness?
seeing someone for who they are not for the race they are. that’s the advantage, right? i struggle to figure out whether this is a perfectly logical explanation (ple) to the question/dilemma of living in a race-conscious world. a way to minimize that consciousness. or is it something other than a ple--is it a cultural shift in consciousness around the importance of race? is race beginning to lose its power over how a person, and how groups of people, are perceived and treated?
then, i think about cases like jena 6. doesn’t what happened there--in a segregated louisiana prove that we are not yet blind and don’t have the capacity to be so? i know this potentially is a rhetorical question, but i don’t wish it to be one. i want to talk about it.
i don’t think we actually talk about race enough. talk about it to understand it, and to understand the impacts it has. likewise, i think colorblindness should be talked about more as well. what it means and the impacts of its existence--in theory and in practice.

about colorblindness...i think it’s the not caring that gets to me. when a person says the world should be colorblind and follows that sentiment with the fact that they don’t care about a person’s race, it scares me. it feels like an attempt to wipe away belief systems, traditions, and experiences. if i say i am colorblind and i don’t care about your race, it seems like the additional message i send it that i also don’t care about your history and experience in this world.
i’m no expert, but i do believe race matters. on the systemic and cultural levels, race matters because it is used to advantage some and disadvantage others. on the individual level, race matters because it shapes how we see ourselves and how we are able to see and connect with others. there are high stakes in one’s race. i believe a person’s experience is impacted by race and i don’t want to be blind to that.

similarly, i don’t want to be blind to a person’s gender. pansexuality describes a sexual orientation where gender doesn’t matter. it’s attraction regardless of gender identity and expression.
intellectually, i know that the concept of pansexuality is about acknowledging there is a continuum of gender and not a binary system of gender. which i agree to; gender identity and expression are continuums, not a rigid system of two and only two. however, because pansexuality is attraction regardless of gender identity and expression i think there is blindness present. blindness to how we live gendered (and sex-roled) experiences. even if they are genderqueered experiences.
pansexuality is also viewed as being more open-minded. a more progressive perspective of gender and sexual orientation. if that’s the case, am i lacking open-mindedness because i don’t believe in its reality? perhaps it is not even about open and closed-mindedness. maybe a better way of thinking is on, off, and idle. much like our machines and technology. as gender is seen as a binary, it is on; when it is seen as a continuum, it is idle; when it is not seen at all, it is off. now, after writing that i think with that logical that pansexuality is an interesting mix of idleness and off. idle because it acknowledges the continuum, but off because of its practice of blindness.

everything is so gray and unresolved. i don’t even know how to continue to describe these two concepts and their connections. i am riddled with questions i just don’t have answers to...
do race and gender still play the same roles now as they did when i was a kid and teenager? what role do they play?
am i stuck in an archaic way of thinking about race and gender?
is the attempt at non-judgment actually judgment after all?
are colorblindness and pansexuality applications of social justice or movements away from social justice?

dear void of the unknown, please help me find pathways of thinking and articulating these dilemmas i have laid out before you.