Carmen Van Kerckhove over at New Demogrphic posted a great post on her Race in the Workplace Blog a while back. In her post, she explains that fear of being branded a racist causes people to say that they do not see the most obvious of physical features. She says:
Noticing a person’s race doesn’t make you racist. What does make you racist is if you make assumptions about that person’s intellectual, physical, or emotional characteristics based on the race you think the person is.
Yes, even if those assumptions you make are positive. Ideas about “strong black women” or “smart Asians” are still racist because they reduce human beings to two-dimensional caricatures and assume that race predetermines intellectual, physical, and emotional traits.
She is right, It is time for our society to begin to get comfortable acknowledging differences rather than marginalizing those who are not members of the majority.