blind people's perception of race

[gusl]

Can blind people perceive race? What about those who were born blind (who learn about race in a mostly unsupervised way)?

How does their conceptions of race affect their attitudes?

Are there cases of former racists who lost their prejudice because of going blind, thereby realizing that they really couldn't tell the difference afterall? "OMG! My best friend is a X!"

Comments

[demarko (from livejournal.com)]

here...just...just watch this:
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=24400&title=frontline-clayton-bigsby

[pbrane.livejournal.com]

this presupposes that the only way you can tell someone is of a particular race is by sight, and that there are no cultural differences that come along with it.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

this is a reasonable assumption in Brazil.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

also reasonable in the USA, for most people who don't have a distinct accent/dialect.

[pbrane.livejournal.com]

Race isn't about visual "color". That's just an insignificant marker. Think about Jews in Nazi Germany, who might not have known to be Jewish until the name is known or more information comes in. Once known, suddenly their treatment is changed. Similarly, being blind just means that you can't be prejudiced about someone "upon sight" - you have to wait until you know what their race is from some other means.

Its just like the way people feel about sexuality now - they're "blind" to sexuality until the information comes out, but once it is, people don't need "first hand experience" with the fact of someones sexuality, they just need the knowledge that someone is in a particular group (the group of "heterosexuals" or "homosexuals" etc) to suddenly have different opinions about what kind of person they are.

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

Most people in the USA have a somewhat distinctive accent/dialect. Also, names tend to be very distinctive. (Although some of them are perhaps not obvious - for instance, Quentin and Albert are disproportionately common for Asian-Americans, despite beint very traditional English names.)