Color blind casting. The terminology 1st introduced to me at college, Roosevelt University, Chicago. My theatre department chair, Yolanda Lyon Miller said Roosevelt University's theatre department was the 1st in the U.S. to cast a role for a play for the person best suited whatever the shade of their skin or ethnic heritage. Our Anne in Shakespeare's MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR was African American. Our Colonel in the musical SOMETHING'S AFOOT of Mexican ancestry, and our Geoffrey, Guam heritage, was the romantic lead opposite Hope, blue-eyed and blond haired from Kansas. I co-shared the role Virtue with an African American actress in THE BLACKS. Our Marta in the musical COMPANY was African American, one of Bobby's girlfriends, Bobby played by a blond haired/blue eyed Indiana raised farm boy.
How about color blind living? How about no more boxes to check off what our ancestry and heritage is? There's zero value gained. There's no reason. American? U.S. Citizen? Sure. Ancestry, heritage on forms? Taxes? Applications? Loans? No bearing. No value. Cultural heritage and ancestry should be educational, the good celebrated and the evil not repeated. The "system", the "way it's been" needs to be abolished with regards to these things in order for perceptions to change on how we think with regards to one another. People. Americans. Humans. All basically good and surviving the day, moment to moment, hopefully doing our best and hopefully learning to do better.
Young children don't perceive a person's features and identify them by such. Like color blindness, or blindness, there's not ideas and thoughts imprint about he shade of one's sin, outer shell. I'm fair and freckled. A child might notice my "dots" and ask about them. But, "freckle face", "red" and "carrot top" won't come to mind, as "black", "fat", etc. don't.
When I was 4, my parents left me overnight with their friend Andre Mayo. I remember her apartment. Andre liked cartoons. So did I. It was an impromptu sleepover and Andre dressed me in one of her flowing chiffon nightgowns, bunching the front together and securing it with a large brooch. My parents told me this story when I was older and I've always remembered and shared it. Before bedtime Andre and I were washing our hands in the bathroom sink. I said, "Andre, your hands are brown." She said, "Why so they are." And nothing further was said. Just a noticed thing by a 4 year-old. No history behind it. No judgment. No explanation. Just a moment and honesty. That we could all have this fleeting noticing of each other, in and out, there and gone, with no judgment or ideas of who were are and what we're capable of achieving by how we appear to be.
Color blind. I don't know if this is even an appropriately acceptable concept anymore but I understand and agree with it.
In the film MASK, Rocky has a disfigured face and works at a camp for blind kids. He and a girl, blind from birth, connect. He describes clouds to her by placing cotton in her hands. He finally trusts her to touch his face. We watch her processing. It's all new. 1st time. She's not imprinted by what advertising, media and others deem beautiful, normal or ugly. Rocky's features don't shock. They intrigue. His features shock only the girls parents and they end the friendship.
The history of our ideas about appearances need to be changed. Boxes need to be unchecked. Eradicated. Not forgotten, but not held in present or future thoughts, coloring our views on who we are. We are human. We survive. We are Americans. Equality. Freedom. Rights. #blacklivesmatter
