Ask Lemmy

Having been a relay operator for 4 years, I would say no. They can be, and sometimes are, as racist as anyone else.

They will certainly have a harder time judging people by their skin color.

However many racist people aren't actually confronted with "foreigners" a lot. So I guess blind people can perfectly be racist about someone's accent or form racist opinions just by the discourse around them and the news they consume.

Babies aren't born racist, it's something you learn. So my guess is blind people are pretty close to the average, maybe a little less.

I have no data to back this up, but I would guess that no, they are not. It's not that racists are immediately disgusted by the actual skin color or features of other people. Racism is a learned behavior that "others" people that are not in your "tribe". You can also often tell if someone is a different race, by their accent, the way they speak, or the way they act. A lot of racism is based on stereotypes and tribalism, and the excuse of racists is that their dislike is based on their actions and culture, not their actual race. I also suspected that, though many blind people are very social and lead fulfilling lives, on average they are probably more used to being shut ins, or at least limited to a small amount of familiar areas. And the best cure for racism and xenophobia is travel. So yeah, I'd say that balances out the potential loss in racial discrimination based on not being able to actually see the person.

Another way this question might be phrased is: is race only the color of skin?

And we know the answer: no! The concept of race (developed by racists) is more cultural than biological (in fact, there is no such thing as a biologically real race, it's a bit of a myth).

Blind people are just as capable of holding bigoted and biased attitudes against people they hear as non-white, or smell as non-white, etc. Visual cues are not the only way someone identifies another's class, race, ethnicity, etc. Racist attitudes are perpetuated against job applicants on the basis of whether a name sounds white or not, without ever seeing the candidate in person. A blind person is just as capable of that racism as a sighted person.

I knew someone who wasn't even blind who was obsessed about the smell of Indian people and who would forbid her family from eating Indian food in her home to avoid the smell, etc.

I dunno man.. I saw this documentary once about a blind adopted black kid from the South. Actually leader of the klan. No one dare to tell him he was black. He was as racist as they come. He eventually committed suicide to have one less n** in the community. A very unkind fellow that went by the name of Clayton Bigsby,

Probably a big "it depends". Being racist when the only obvious difference between two people is the skin color (e.g. middle class white and black people in the US, you often can't even tell by the name) is quite extreme, but what if there are some differences? Many groups that racists hate can have noticeable accents or smell different due to different dietary habits.

Even when its just black vs. white in the US context, apparently many blind people still react differently depending on someone's race:

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/29/226833165/studying-how-the-blind-perceive-race

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/30/health/blind-people-race

Looks like you can't escape living in a racist society just because you can't immediately tell when someone isn't white.

@ivanafterall@lemmy.world @asklemmy@lemmy.world

Blindness can be a condition with which someone was born, or can be something acquired late during one's biological existence. The very condition of blindness varies: some blind people get to, at least roughly, see shapes and forms (considered as "legally blind", for example, in cases of extremely high myopia unable to be corrected with lenses, or some cases of macular damage)

In the one hand, racism isn't restricted to physical appearance. There is racism against accents or the manner someone talks. There's racism against the kinds of food eaten by certain cultures (perceived through smell and taste).

On the other hand, blind people themselves are often victims of prejudice.

Having said all this, I'd say racism doesn't feel entirely correlated with sight. But maybe some correlation holds, and blind people would be more respectful and empathetic to others, especially given the prejudice they themselves experience.

For me, racism (like most forms of prejudice) is not based on sight but on preconceived notions, and cultural/societal backgrounds... which will work the same on people whether one can see them or not. hence how simple it is to hate on a whole nation or group of population that one has never met. Or does not really know.

I wouldn't think it would make much of a difference. The thing that breaks people out of prejudice is interacting with people from different backgrounds, the most bigoted people I've ever met were all people who were proud they didn't travel.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

Mark Twain

No input on the query. The question just reminds me of Chapelle’s Clayton Bigsby sketch

Hate is taught, so anyone can literally be racist.

I recall an episode of the TV sitcom "Becker". A blind character meets another blind person and they date and start to hit it off, but when she discovers that he is black, she decides to break up.

This certainly doesn't tell anything about statistics in the real world, but can give an idea into how racism can still be prevalent amongst the blind.