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Blind people can be racist, too, study says
The findings come from interviews conducted in person and over the phone with 25 people who were either born blind or severely visually impaired, or who lost their sight as children or adults. A researcher asked the participants, most of whom lived in the northeast United States, about whether they thought about race and also how it affected their feelings about a person.

The study found that blind people can still have racial stereotypes, but "in all cases it takes them longer to categorize people by race and there is more ambiguity," said Asia M. Friedman, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at University of Delaware, who conducted the study.

The study was presented Tuesday at the American Sociological Association annual meeting, but has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlgJ_sg2MVc

Unlike Friedman's study, however, Obasogie's research, which was published in the book "Blinded By Sight," suggests that people who were born blind do, in fact, think about a person's physical appearance, including skin color and facial features. They also make quick judgments based on the physical attributes they perceive people to have, he said.

"I would push back against the idea that blind people somehow enter every social interaction with a blank slate," he said.

Some of the more than 100 blind people Obasogie spoke with said they might ask others to tell them about a person's race before meeting. And even if they don't know a person's race beforehand, they might try to figure it out during the interaction, rather than keeping an open mind.

"If race is such a strong and deep part of our social order that blind people who have never seen anything can see and pay attention to race ... it shows how deep the problem is," he said.

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Obasogie thinks these studies suggest that so-called "colorblind" policies, such as government programs that do not use racial data in deciding how to divvy up funds, are misguided in their approach.

"Race is a disease of society and the idea that the disease will go away by ignoring it is not the most sophisticated and proper way to deal with the problem," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/30/health/blind-people-race/





 
 
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