“There are Two People at Work That I'm Fairly Certain are Black”: Uncertainty and Deliberative Thinking in Blind Race Attribution

Abstract

Geneticists, biologists, social scientists, and humanist scholars have powerfully critiqued race as a stable set of biological categories. Despite this, in everyday life, race is consistently assumed to be visually available in physical features. Racial categories also continue to be used in scientific and social scientific research as if they were self-evident and real. In this study, I examine the role of visual perception in the construction of racial categories and their recalcitrance in everyday thought and interaction. My observations are based on in-depth interviews with 25 blind people, which highlight the unique features of their nonvisual, non-appearance-based experiences of race.

Keywords::

• race
• blind
• sensory perception
• cognition
• body

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Eviatar Zerubavel, Wayne Brekhus, Catherine Lee, Maria Johnson, Tammy Anderson, Ben Fleury-Steiner, Santhi Leon, Lynn Davidman, and Kristen Loomis, as well as editors Betty Dobratz and Lisa Waldner and the anonymous reviewers at TSQ, all of whom provided important feedback on previous drafts. I am also grateful to Dan Ryan and the attendees of the annual Soon-to-be-Author-Meets-Non-Critics session at ASA, where I first presented the ideas for this project in 2013. This research was in part supported by a General University Research grant from the University of Delaware.

NOTES

Notes

¹ Recently the validity of the distinction between Type 1 and Type 2 processing has been debated on a number of dimensions, including identifying the defining (versus just correlated) attributes of each as well as the question of whether the two “types” are actually qualitatively distinct, or instead represent a continuum of processing or even a single process (see Evans and Stanovich 2013 for an overview of these critiques). Setting these debates aside, here I find the broad vocabulary of “automatic” and “deliberate” useful for capturing differences in temporality and certainty between visual and nonvisual experiences of race.

² For empirical analyses of the uncritical use of racial categories in medical research, see Friedman and Lee (2013), Drevdahl, Taylor, and Phillips (2001), Fujimura and Rajagopalan (2011), Lee (2009), Sankar, Cho, and Mountain (2007). On the use of racial categories in social science, see Brubaker (2002:165), Bonilla-Silva (2010:8–9), Martin and Yeung (2003). And in social psychology, see Hirschfeld (1996), Hunt et al. (2000).

³ The complete list of organizations contacted is the following: National Federation of the Blind (National), Dancing Dots Braille Music Technology (PA), Canine Partners for Life (PA), Philadelphia Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (PA), Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired (PA), Blind Awareness Expo (PA), Vision2013 Conference (PA), Pennsylvania Association for the Blind (PA), Blind Sports (PA), Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired (PA), National Foundation of the Blind of Delaware (DE), Delaware Association for the Blind (DE), Blind Ambition Groups (DE), Delaware Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired (DE), Blind Industries and Services of Maryland (MD).