What kind of person would be fine with the following....

[hunter]

29. I'd have called my grandfather "colorblind" living in a white neighborhood.

"Colorblind" at work for him, no problem -- white engineer, Asian engineer, black engineer... can he do the work?

Mostly he operated that way in ordinary life too. Friendly, civil, respected people. Colorblind.

Then I started dating, in his words, "A Mexican girl," and he was uncomfortable with that.

When I married this "Mexican girl" he was so uncomfortable he chose not to attend our wedding. (Fortunately he got past that.)

I grew up in an Ivory Soap 99 44?100% pure white community. There were all sorts of subtle and not so-subtle ways non-whites were excluded. DWBs were a police sport. The place is still like that in many ways. It's a largely Republican/Libertarian place and I'm guessing many people there would claim to be "colorblind." But how would they know? They are insulated from the multicultural world. They've never seen chicken feet in the butcher cases of their local supermarket

I met my wife in Los Angeles, mid-eighties, we were both public school science teachers. We taught in multi-cultural schools and we've lived in multicultural communities ever since. The community we live in now is mostly Mexican American with a very large population of black and Asian retired military personnel and their families. Now whenever I'm visiting "white" communities I experience some unease even though I'm white. When I was a kid living in those places I didn't feel anything was unusual. I was colorblind because there was very little color.

In no way am I colorblind now. The community I'm comfortable in, the community I call "mine" is multi-cultural.