We are visual people. We like to see things – TV shows, movies, even each other. It’s the assumptions we make about what we see, or what we think others see, that sometimes get us into trouble.
Take Harry Reid’s widely reported comments about then-Presidential Candidate Obama in John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book “Game Change.” Part of what got to me about this was not only that Senator Reid thought the President was more politically marketable because of his appearance, but he was making assumptions about what the American people would see, and what we think about what we see, based on assumptions we make on a daily basis because of how someone looks. I agree with George Will that unfortunately, no matter how bad it sounds, Senator Reid is onto something.
Despite the fact it’s wrong, we make judgments and assumptions about people’s looks all the time. If someone looks thin, we might assume they are fit and take good care of themselves. If they look fat to us, we may assume the opposite. If we think someone looks young, we may assume they don’t have the capability or intelligence to do certain jobs or handle certain situations. All of these assumptions are superficial and, many times, incorrect. When you add someone’s race to the attributes we make unfair assumptions about, almost nobody wins. However, I think it is just as tragic to expect that other people are going to make certain prejudicial assumptions, no matter how incorrect they are. In a way, it’s perpetuating the very stereotypes we’re so against.
All that said, I do have a lot of hope for the future. Last year, during the week of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, my son told me he thought it was stupid to exclude people just because of the color of their skin. He was eight at the time, and he’s a visual person too.
Fortunately for all of us, there’s more than one kind of sight. Because of this, maybe we can expect better of ourselves and each other.
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