When nurses are hired at UAMS, they are set up with an appointment at Student and Employee Health for a New Employee Medical screening. A brief history and physical is taken, vaccinations are reviewed, titers are drawn, among other things, and a color-blind test is administered. Color blindness is the inability to distinguish between color pairs, most often red-green or blue-yellow. It is typically inherited and caused by genetic issues disrupting photopigments in the cone cells of the eye. Many patient screenings include the need to distinguish color to interpret the test. For example, in a guaiac fecal occult blood test, the presence of a bluish-greenish hue in the testing window after the solution is applied indicates a positive screen, a sign of the presence of blood in the stool. Urine dipsticks also require the ability to distinguish between colors to interpret the results. It is important for a nurse to know if they are colorblind because not knowing could mean misinterpretation of a screening test and result in patient harm. Nurses who have color blindness disability can consult with peers for interpretation of patient screenings or if they need confirmation of any assessment related to color.
There is another type of color blindness that can be just as harmful to patients as physical color blindness: Color blindness to race, or rather, racial color blindness. Racial color blindness is a mindset that dismisses differences in races and ethnicities as a strategy to end discrimination and racism. Comments like, “I don’t see color” and “I treat everyone equally” are statements that indicate racial color blindness. While this seems like a great response to addressing racism, racial color blindness fails to produce equity and fair and just treatment of Black, Indigenous, & People of Color (BIPOC). Racial color blindness perpetuates racism because it fails to take into account that race, a social construct, and racism exist and impact the lived experiences BIPOC individuals have had as a result of their skin color. Racial color blindness can also prevent an individual from recognizing policies, actions, and behaviors that contribute to racism.
Let’s consider this mindset in the context of someone who is differently abled. You have an acquaintance who is in a wheelchair. You desire to treat them with dignity and respect. You think, “I’m not going to pay attention to their wheelchair, I’m not going to treat them different. I just want to see them as being able-bodied, like me”. Your intentions are good-hearted, but as you are walking and talking with this person, you reach the stairs and start up them, continuing to chatter away. After a second or two, you realize you left your differently-abled acquaintance at the bottom of the stairs. While trying to treat them equally, you failed to take into account the impact their disability had on the circumstance they faced in the moment.
The answer to addressing the problem of racism is actually taking a deeper dive into the history of race, privilege and oppression, and understanding how race influences social structures like education, legislation, and healthcare in unjust and inequitable ways. Injustice, inequity, and disparities will never be addressed if we ignore race as a factor; only if we acknowledge and investigate it.
The American Nurses Association joined the National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing in 2021 and has done much work towards racial reckoning through adoption of a definition of racism and a racial reckoning statement, conducting a series of listening sessions and national survey, and hosting learning series. To learn more about racism in nursing, join the American Nurses Association Racism in Nursing lecture series. Register here.
More Resources:
Apfelbaum, E. P., Norton, M. I., & Sommers, S. R. (2012). Racial color blindness: Emergence, practice, and implications. Current directions in psychological science, 21(3), 205-209.
Ramsay-Seaner, K., Letcher, A., Isaacson, M. J., Fenster, K., & Heckmann, B. (2023). Assessing Color-Blind Racism in Nursing Students. Nursing Education Perspectives, 44(3), 172-174.
Yearby, R. (2021). Race based medicine, colorblind disease: how racism in medicine harms us all. The American Journal of Bioethics, 21(2), 19-27.
