I have lived in dominantly non-white neighborhoods for the last 7 years. I pay attention to the nationalities of the people around me. Lumping the African Americans whose families have lived here for centuries in the same bucket as the Somali refugees would be absurd. Not for genetic reasons (though there could be greater genetic variance between east and west Africans than between Europeans and Asians) but because they have different cultures.
But, while nationality matters, it would be impractical to ignore skin color entirely. When I moved into my current home, a neighbor asked me what my favorite Black jokes are. It matters whether he is Black. It matters whether I am Black.
I think race should be viewed as one dimension of ethnicity. It is perfectly acceptable to speak Vietnamese to someone who understands Vietnamese. It is rude (if you are not in Vietnam) to speak Vietnamese to someone who doesn’t understand Vietnamese. In theory one could ask but that is even ruder. (It’s impractically time-consuming too.) If you don’t want to whitewash everyone then you have to guess. The color of one’s skin contains information about whether someone speaks Vietnamese. Thus, skin color is a useful signal.
When I hear “I don’t see people in terms of race”, I translate it into “I am willfully ignorant of the ethnic dynamics (including power dynamics) around me”. Your description of the racial bias seminar describes someone doing the exact same thing.
When I hear “I don’t see people in terms of race”, I translate it into “I am willfully ignorant of the ethnic dynamics (including power dynamics) around me”.
Stated without any qualifiers, this seems to be the type of reaction that leads people to treat the autistic, naive, or otherwise socially impaired as malicious, and then possibly to punish them for something they don’t understand, which may bewilder them and further impair their social development. I hope you successfully avoid doing this.
Autists are not willfully ignorant. Most autists are aware that there are social dynamics that they don’t understand and won’t say things like “I don’t see people in terms of race”.
I have lived in dominantly non-white neighborhoods for the last 7 years. I pay attention to the nationalities of the people around me. Lumping the African Americans whose families have lived here for centuries in the same bucket as the Somali refugees would be absurd. Not for genetic reasons (though there could be greater genetic variance between east and west Africans than between Europeans and Asians) but because they have different cultures.
But, while nationality matters, it would be impractical to ignore skin color entirely. When I moved into my current home, a neighbor asked me what my favorite Black jokes are. It matters whether he is Black. It matters whether I am Black.
I think race should be viewed as one dimension of ethnicity. It is perfectly acceptable to speak Vietnamese to someone who understands Vietnamese. It is rude (if you are not in Vietnam) to speak Vietnamese to someone who doesn’t understand Vietnamese. In theory one could ask but that is even ruder. (It’s impractically time-consuming too.) If you don’t want to whitewash everyone then you have to guess. The color of one’s skin contains information about whether someone speaks Vietnamese. Thus, skin color is a useful signal.
When I hear “I don’t see people in terms of race”, I translate it into “I am willfully ignorant of the ethnic dynamics (including power dynamics) around me”. Your description of the racial bias seminar describes someone doing the exact same thing.
Stated without any qualifiers, this seems to be the type of reaction that leads people to treat the autistic, naive, or otherwise socially impaired as malicious, and then possibly to punish them for something they don’t understand, which may bewilder them and further impair their social development. I hope you successfully avoid doing this.
Autists are not willfully ignorant. Most autists are aware that there are social dynamics that they don’t understand and won’t say things like “I don’t see people in terms of race”.