We, as a race, have lost the ability to manage simple human connections with people who don't answer definitions that have been imposed upon us throughout our upbringing; our family, teachers and friends have forced them upon us; TV, newspapers and movies have worked to widen that gap. It is all rooted in our inability to feel empathy toward people who, whether implicitly or explicitly, don’t belong to our world.

You Can’t Fake Empathy

Take for instance a homeless person. You certainly pity him and know that his life is tough, but are you able to really feel for him as an individual, not as a phenomenon? Sure you can’t, and perhaps that's a good thing because you can't carry the trouble of all homeless people on your shoulders as your personal burden. Some doctors develop that detachment toward their patients, and so do undertakers. Otherwise, they will tell you, they would never be able to go on doing their job day in and day out. But the difference between a good doctor and a skilled one, is that the good doctor feels enough empathy for his patient and lowers his own protective shield for a moment, at the right time, to let his patient feel that he is more than a mere "case" to him. Being polite to a patient or his family is often not enough and you can't fake empathy; not with people in real distress.

The question of how we should deal with minorities has bothered modern societies at least since the middle of the last century. The term "minority group" has taken on new meanings, to include not only ethnic groups but also less fortunate individuals, such as crippled people, retarded people, those who are sick and, generally, any group that is defined by a trait that is not present in all the population. To become a "minority" the defining trait doesn’t have to be a negative one, although in most cases it almost automatically assumes a negative connotation. For instance, one never refers to Nobel Prize Laureates as a "minority group", although they certainly are a small group within the general population.

Rather than dealing with the roots of the problem, however, society always prefers to find roundabout ways to mitigate it. Those, more often than not, are mere palliatives dictated by hypocrisy, which leave the problem seething and exacerbating under the surface.

Courting Stress

Political correctness is the device by which people attempt to create an amorphous society – one in which we seek to homogenize everyone and everybody into an uninteresting mass of humanity lacking a diversified identity. So we worry ourselves sick if we are not sure what the latest politically correct way to define somebody is. We also don’t know which term will be considered politically correct by our interlocutor, since some new terms have been considered to be offensive by the same people they were supposed to shield from offense. All these factors may turn a simple conversation into a stressful episode.

WHAT IS “TRUE COLOR BLINDNESS”?

There is an ongoing discussion in the literature and on the web, about color blindness, which misses the point entirely. That’s because it links it to racial issues and forgets the broad picture. True color blindness is that blessed state in which you truly fail to notice superficial elements that stand between you and your fellow human beings; that fortunate failure of your brain to be ignited by stereotypes.

The problem is not limited to race. Limiting the discussion to race hides the broader picture in which racial issues are but one of many facets of the disease and does not allow us to see the rest. Moreover, we turn color blindness into denial, as argued by Warren J. Blumenfeld. As pointed out by Michael I. Norton (see Carmen Nobel’s excellent article), “we do notice race, and there's no way of getting around this fact”. The trick, however, is to notice it and then to go on noticing that it has no importance or meaning whatsoever to you. No, you don't need to fool yourself – that won't work. Please read on.

WHY AM I WRITING ABOUT TRUE COLOR BLINDNESS?

After all, this is a literary blog, not a social sciences one. But I am a writer and I write about Life; I couldn't write and feel about my characters the way I do, without first mastering true color blindness and, as a result, developing empathy. There is no reason why you can't do the same, but someone has to tell you that it can be done, and that it’s easy once you get the hang of it. So I’m writing about it to share with you the many rewards that you can reap from it. I hope you’ll share back and spread the word.