Are you actually anti-racist? | Keon West | TEDxNorthern Quarter

Quick Overview

Professor Keon West argues that common anti-racism concepts like "Amauroception" and "Color-Blindness" are often ineffective, or even detrimental, because they rely on ignoring race rather than actively addressing systemic issues, citing research showing that color-blindness can lead to increased explicit and implicit racism, and suggesting that true progress requires acknowledging racial realities instead of pretending they don't exist.

Key Points: The speaker argues that concepts like "Amauroception" (the idea that words have no intrinsic meaning outside of association) and "Color-Blindness" are not real solutions to racism, but rather nonsense words or harmful ideologies. Research from 2018 (Vittrup) involving 107 US mothers and 2015 research involving 433 German teachers showed that the majority supported color-blindness as a good way to address race. The speaker cites research indicating that the more people practice color-blindness, the more racist they become on every measured scale, suggesting it increases both explicit and implicit racism. Color-blindness is presented as the dominant racial ideology among White Americans, according to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's book "Racism Without Racists". Sociological research demonstrates that color-blindness is associated with less friendly attitudes toward Black people, less support for Black Lives Matter, and less support for affirmative action. The speaker, a social psychologist, states that concepts like diversity statements, unconscious bias training, meritocracy, and cognitive diversity are all part of the color-blindness framework that fails to solve societal problems.

Context: Keon West, a social psychologist, delivers a TEDx talk at TEDxNorthern Quarter challenging the pervasive modern concepts used to combat racism, primarily focusing on "Color-Blindness" and the invented term "Amauroception." He contrasts these common, often well-intentioned approaches with empirical research findings to argue that ignoring racial realities ultimately exacerbates prejudice and hinders genuine progress toward racial equity.