I want to learn to see your color.
Decades ago, I asked a black friend of mine if the goal of being “color-blind” was actually a good thing. I had read some of Dr. King’s perspectives, 
listened to Michael Jackson music (“I don’t want to spend my life being a color”) and because of my views of justice, I think that certain things (like justice) should be blind… so I wondered if it was actually a positive to act as if there were no such thing as “color”…
He told that in his opinion, it wasn’t.
He wanted me to see his color. He was being trained to be a therapist, like I was. He said that just like everything else, if I want to understand him, I would understand him in terms of anything connected to his identity (and how he interpreted those things)… background, Family of Origin, views of God, and including color and ethnicity.
That made and makes sense to me. It isn’t intuitive, since I don’t think of my “whiteness” as having much to do with my identity – but I think that is the prerogative of the majority. And, it may also be that because of the importance of Christ in my identity, my skin color (excuse the term) “pales” in comparison.
The issue of what we call by the misnomer “Racism” is and has been of importance to me ever since I understood that it was a thing.
Are there different races of roses? Labs? Just some genetic differences that mean that the phenotypes are different surface colors! How is that possibly a race?
I have written a good deal about it for this reason. I will include links to those articles throughout this one. Why have this been important to me?
First, some of the importance is personal – friends and family who are ethnic minorities, for example, including my youngest child, current neighbors and friends… and one of my childhood friends.
Also, being a “child of the South,” I have seen racism in various forms in the words and mindsets of people around me at times. Usually, and sometimes in my case I am sure, it is accidentally and ignorantly communicated (and likely, I will unintentionally do so in this article, too).
Sometimes as a young man, I saw it flagrantly and 
intentionally – also sometimes by me…
(I don’t think I ever targeted any real people, but I told and laughed at plenty of racially charged jokes. At the time, I remember my conscious bothering me about it, but approval of the crowd was too important to me as a middle schooler).
…I have repented and apologized (about 24 minutes in) for those from the pulpit several times and am grateful to God that I get to do so.
That being said, I am proud that my family represents a cosmic shift in “racism”. In three short generations, we have grown from overt racism within the family, to
having an African American child,
having numerous friends with other skin colors.
encouraging my children to date and marry minorities if they so desire,
speaking and teaching on racism,
standing in solidarity with the minority struggle against systemic and acute racism.
Anything I missed?
Maybe that list seems wrong from some perspective (like maybe all of those should be “of course you do/should/would”, but that is my point.). These are relatively natural things in my family now, only 3 generations removed from none of those things being reality.
Amazingly, as an adult, I honestly think I have not heard a single white person speak or behave in my presence in a way that was clearly or overtly and intentionally racist. I know that it happens, but that is a change. It is likely the experience of many white people today and part of why we are ignorance to the fact that racist actions – even intentional ones – are all around us.
As we continue to try to have a sophisticated conversation on these issues (which is less and less often allowed in today’s “meme” culture), we get to acknowledge progress made and progress needed… Neither cancels the other out.
This is one of the ways we, as Christians, can join our voices to the message without having to join any movement outside of The Way of Christ.