Osagie K. Obasogie set out to find out what ‘race’ means to people who’ve never been able to see skin color.
This is a great interview - Click here for the whole thing: www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/01/19/how-blind-people-see-race/0pdBKGzv9y2P53BXWke0oO/story.html?s_campaign=8315
In all, Obasogie interviewed 106 subjects who had been blind since
birth—white, black, male, female, young and old, urban, suburban and
rural. Their stories ranged from the commonplace to the surreal: We meet
a blind black man named Keith, for whom romantic interests rise and
then abruptly fall the moment a blind white woman discovers the texture
of his hair. We meet Laura, who recalls the morning as a young girl she
asked her mother why she was cleaning the kitchen counter. “‘Well,
because black people smell, and your baby sitter was here last night,’”
Laura recalled. “And I said, ‘That’s interesting,’ and filed that away.”
Indeed, Obasogie argues, it is that continual filing away of
information, and not any visually obvious reality, that trains us to see
race and attach meaning to it. “We are all socialized to see race. But
it’s only by talking to blind people that we really get a true
understanding of how strong that socialization practice is,” Obasogie
said. “What this study highlights is how the things that we think are
obvious are often things that society works very hard to teach us.”
