“I don’t care if they’re black, white, green or purple”
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Love love love this cartoon from The K Chronicles, the same strip that brought us That One Black Kid. Click on it to see the full comic.
It’s the typical bull you hear from people who claim to be colorblind. Reminds me of one commenter on Anti-Racist Parent who wrote:
We didn’t care if our daughters were black, white, purple or green…they are our daughters period. I see them, not the colour of their skin or the shape of their eyes.
In response, the always awesome Jae Ran Kim wrote:
And saying, “We didn’t care if our daughters were black, white, purple or green…they are our daughters period. I see them, not the colour of their skin or the shape of their eyes” is extremely offensive to me. Like there are purple and green children. Or maybe you could stretch it and love a polka dotted kid too, I know there are so many of those lingering and languishing in orphanages somewhere.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Patricia wrote:
And, of course, while it may not matter to the parent, the reality is that our children (no matter what colour) have to live in a world where it DOES matter to some and have to learn to survive when the spotlight/racist comment is turned on them.
God, I am glad my son is only black not purple!! lol
Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 9:18 am ¶
Blanky wrote:
I am actually disappointed The K Chronicles. The author stole this decade-old joke (an admittedly funny one) from the great (and late) Mitch Hedberg.
Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 3:34 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
Isn’t this a little too negative? Sure, there’s an ignorant assumption behind this well-meaning expression. It’s ignorant to speak as if color doesn’t matter at all.
Also, there’s a deeper worry. Some who say this may well be saying something that could be more explicitly put as follows. “I know it’s weird for white parents to have kids who are black or Asian or whatever, but I don’t care if they’re even weirder than real non-white kids. They could even be imaginary racial colors like purple and green. I’d still love them.” The problem is that such a speech is demeaning the kids who aren’t white by treating them as ok despite not being white, and that does have a troublesome assumption.
But it’s at the same time pretty well-meaning to insist that the race of your kids doesn’t affect how much you love your kids. Putting in hyperbolic language is kind of cheesy, and there is the worry that this language is masking a residual racism that the parent is trying to overcome. Still, it’s movement in the right direction away from the residual racism, and I have a hard time being too negative about that, even if it isn’t yet confronting the root racist assumption.
Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 4:00 pm ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
But you gotta watch out for those Green people (or Verdian Americans, as they INSIST on being called now)… they’re sneaking into this country across the Arctic Ocean to take our jobs!!!
Seriously, speaking as a Black man who has White relatives (all of my dad’s side of the family, plus a great great grandfather on my mom’s side) I just HATE it when well meaning liberal White Americans use that “..I don’t care if theyr’e Black, Yellow, Green, Purple…” line!
First of all, there aren’t any green or purple people – human skin color is basically limited to various shades of red – from the extremely light pinkish red of White folks, light skinned Arabs and Middle Easterners and the lighter skinned East Asian folks to the various shades of reddish brown (the most common human skin color) of light skinned Blacks like me, and many South Asians, South East Asians, brownskinned Arabs and Middle Easterners and Latinos to the dark red brown of Blacks, Southern Indians and some Pacific Islanders.
The only green and purple folks you see are folks who used to be one of the other colors – but who had a very bad accident and are now in a coroner’s freezer awating autopsy.
Beyond the spectrum of visible light and the range of natural human colors, the fact is that the green and purple comment trivializes the very real racism that exists in America and much of the world.
I had an Aunt (White, my dad’s sister) who was a New England liberal – she and her seconnd husband had one kid the regular way, and adopted a little United Nations – a Black girl, a Latino boy and an American Indian boy.
And Aunt Barbara was one of those “green and purple” liberals too…
But, when my adopted cousins hit their teenage years, in an affluent all White suburb in Connecticut, it became clear that, while Green and Purple may have been acceptable, Black was most certainly NOT.
My Native American and Latino adopted cousins were light enough to pass for White – or at least close too it (plus, being male, the whole “naturally athletic minority” think helped them fit in).
But my Black adopted cousin was too brown to assimilate – so she ended up running with the “wrong crowd”, getting pregnant at an early age, then getting pregnant again, then getting sent to a nut house and having her kids adopted by my aunt.
Maybe it would have been easier if she’d been Green or Purple…..
Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 4:31 pm ¶
jae ran wrote:
Well, Jeremy, if it’s “well-meaning to insist that the race of your kids doesn’t affect how much you love your kids” then why do some feel the need to make that statement in the first place?
Posted 10 Aug 2007 at 12:35 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
Well, I’d think that would be pretty obvious from what I already said. I acknowledged that some who say this kind of thing are operating from an assumption that it’s better for them to have white kids. That’s at the very least a kind of unconscious residual racism. Some who say this may not realize that, and some may. Either way, they’re affirming that they don’t agree with that, even if their initial desire to say that indicates a kind of unconscious tendency toward that. I would have thought it admirable to resist one’s internal racist urges.
Posted 10 Aug 2007 at 12:59 pm ¶
Corby wrote:
Or, Jeremy and Jae and Gregory, it could be that they are trying to stave off the possible racist comments by ignorant people by stating right up front that race is unimportant to whether or not they love their kids.
Honestly, condemning people for making the “green, purple” comment is missing the forest for the trees. People are making an attempt, however misguided, in avoiding and condemning racism, and you’re just stoking the fires by making fun of them for it.
Well done.
Posted 13 Aug 2007 at 12:21 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
Corby, I would not go that far. I think there are some assumptions behind this sort of statement, at least in the typical case, that are worth confronting. I indicated some of them in my first comment above, but I’ve written them out more carefully here.
Posted 14 Aug 2007 at 5:02 pm ¶
marge twain wrote:
Surprise, even well meaning white people don’t fully understand racism. Encountering it for the first time directed toward their children (and it’s hard enough when people don’t accept your same-race adopted children as fully “yours”) they react with clumsy, ineloquent indignation.
White parents of mixed-race kids also find themselves faced with the reality of our racist society of which they were not previously aware. In their own way, by having different race children they are trying to dismantle racism. I find it hard to judge these people, even as I find fault with the green/purple comparison. The experience of being the majority race is a powerful one.
Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 7:41 pm ¶
Myl wrote:
I hate this kind of sentiment. The sentiment that everyone really is a little bit racist, that no one really is race blind, and that only white people claim that they are. I’m black and I am 100% sure that I am color blind in every way. To dismiss people like me is to write off the post racial future that many, many people my age embrace, and I think it’s a future we’re all looking forward too. And it’s even worse to pass us off as a different, modern kind of racist.
Posted 21 Jun 2008 at 1:44 pm ¶