Some people are having difficulty understanding what the liberal concept of "colour-blindness" refers to & take it literally to mean that people claim that they genuinely can't see what colour someone's skin is or even understand the concept of skin colour & therefore of racism.

Reading it this literally then enables them to say that failing to see race means failing to see racism. Because obviously if you couldn't see skin colour, you'd have difficulty conceiving of prejudice based on skin colour.

This is not what the expression means. It means not to see people's skin colour as carrying any information about them (apart from eg, what colours would suit them & what factor sun block they'd need.)When you look at someone it's not their skin colour you note particularly.

The idea that this could be possible is counterintuitive to some people so the best way to think about it is to think of hair colour. If two white people are introduced to you & one has blonde hair & one brown hair, you can see that this is the case but there's no baggage.

If you had to describe them, you could do so including their hair colour but it would be neutral. The liberal aim for colourblindness is for skin colour to carry no baggage either. You could describe it but not make any assumptions about character/class/profession etc.

The fact that there is a liberal aim for colourblindness that is related to skin but not one related to hair shows that liberals are very well aware that skin colour does carry baggage. They think this is a bad thing & want to make it go away.

Colourblindness does not mean you don't see racism. That is a very real thing that has been imposed upon skin colour. The racist is someone who has failed at colourblindness in the most egregious way. Because colourblindness is seen as morally good, failures of it are morally bad

And colourblindness does not mean dismissing the importance an individual might feel in their identity as Jamaican or Nigerian or even just as 'black' in a larger community of people within a predominantly white culture.

But people should have the right to decide their own baggage & tell other people what it is or signal it with their dress, speech etc. Race categories do not do this. They lump people together by surface features & then impose baggage on them.

So, if I am colour-blind & meet someone who happens to be black, I can see what colour their skin is AND I know that my country has imposed negative baggage on them because of that colour. I, however, do not have to and my colourblind aim is the aim not to do so.

If we become friends, I will learn what aspects of their identity are important to them. Maybe it's being an Ethiopian Jew or a Jamaican Protestant? Maybe it's being a black Brit? Maybe it's being a writer, a hairdresser, a Marxist or a libertarian or a cat-lover? I wait & see.