I’m Color-blind But What Are You, Anyway?

Using primary data from interviews conducted with 1) close black-white friends and 2) biracial Americans, we examine the relationship between the traditional fixation on racial categorizations and the current emphasis on color-blindness. In doing so, we reveal that, instead of indicating a decline in the importance of race, the color-blind ideology acts as both a cover for the obsession with race in U.S. society and a subtle but effective reinforcement for it. Racism in the United States exists under a relatively new guise. Where once the “one drop rule ” supported overt racial discrimination, a “color-blind ” racial ideology now supports a more covert system of racial inequality (Bonilla-Silva 2003, Carr 1997; Frankenberg 1993). A dominant ideology is a belief system that supports and rationalizes current social arrangements. Those who maintain a color-blind perspective on race 1) maintain that success in life is primarily based on individual effort rather than group membershi