"You deplete me: The cognitive costs of colorblindness on ethnic minorities"

"People are oftentimes unaware of the ideologies endorsed by their colleagues and peers, yet these ideologies may influence them in powerful ways. Indeed, the more White employees endorse a multicultural ideology, the more ethnic minority co-workers demonstrate engagement in the workplace; in contrast, ethnic minority co-workers are less engaged the more Whites endorse a colorblind ideology (Plaut et al., 2009). In addition to being less engaged, do ethnic minorities perform worse on cognitive tasks in settings where those around them endorse colorblindness? The current study examines ethnic minorities' cognitive performance following interactions with Whites who have been primed with a colorblind or multicultural message prior to the interaction...

Priming Whites with colorblindness depleted ethnic minority interaction partners by causing Whites to
act more prejudiced. The primes did not differentially affect Whites' cognitive functioning, perhaps because both ideologies provided a script (Avery, Richeson, Hebl, & Ambady, 2009) for Whites to use in
order to mitigate the difficulties of discussing potentially uncomfortable racial topics (Johnson, Olson, & Fazio, 2009)."
http://www.deborah-holoien.com/papers/HoloienShelton2012.pdf

Agh. I have so many things to say about this. Really, really, really, really who asked for colorblindness? (def not MLK, btw)

And most importantly, who benefits? Clearly colorblindness has a negative impact on the people it is purported to help. But I would be interested in seeing a study where white people interact with colorblind and non-colorblind black people, or something. I mean, I was a colorblind black person for most of my life (I didn't even identify as black, partially because in a weird way it felt rude), and I suspect that it made a lot of white people extra comfortable with me. It sometimes made me feel safe, but in a reactive way, and not in a way where I also felt whole or in charge of my identity.

Also "People in the workplace are likely to discuss topics unrelated to race, yet Plaut et al. (2009) found that Whites' colorblind beliefs predicted ethnic minority co-workers' psychological disengagement" describes two years of my life.