Voice Bohemian

My five-year-old cousin was born colorblind, but he will soon be rid of his condition. I mean this in an unfortunate way.

I learned this when he asked me to play baseball with him. On the Wii, that is. There is a feature on the system called “Mii”, with which one creates a digital avatar to be used in multiplayer games like Wii Sports. As our Wii Baseball game started, I was amused to find the legless, oval-shaped floating avatars of my family members stepping up to the plate. Apparently, the game uses stored avatars as extra players. Any extra players are randomly chosen from available Mii character models and vary in appearance. Much to our entertainment, some models in the game looked like actual baseball players.

My cousin pointed out that one of his batters looked like Derrek Lee of the Chicago Cubs, and he was right. It had the same beard, face shape and everything. I wasn’t surprised that he drew that comparison. Even at age five, he was a huge baseball fan. He watched every baseball game on television with his father. And if he missed a game for whatever reason, they would watch the taped version. He knew more players on more teams than I do. Soon, he identified D-Lee, Pujols, and Big Papi all on his batting squad. Then came his next batter.

My cousin yelled excitedly at the TV and pointed, exclaiming “Oh, that’s…that’s…” He couldn’t quite put a finger on the player’s name, but he said it was if expecting me to know to whom he was referring. I responded by saying that I didn’t know what he was talking about. He then jumped on the couch and proceeded to imitate the player’s batting stance. From the way he stood, hunched over with butt protruding in the air, I immediately knew the player. But for me, his next words changed the meaning of that innocent game.

He said: “He bats like this! And he’s a really, really brown guy!”

Technically, the player truly was “brown.” But according to the rest of society, he would have just been considered black.

My cousin was still a colorblind child.

And he is, because color is just color to him. To him, color is only a difference in the appearance of skin, trivial as a marker of separation. To him, there is no prejudice or profiling attached to a color, no slurs or jokes involved. There is no hate or fear, no history or segregation behind a color. There are no associations with oppression, injustice or pain with the dark. No associations with oppressing, cruelty or control with the light. Black is black, white is white. To him, nothing more. I was saddened to know that someday - - the world will rid him of his condition.

He need not be a victim of hate to learn. The world will open his eyes. It will happen in the everyday. It will happen in school when the flips through the pages of a textbook and sees the cotton-pickers tending the fields, the hollow faces of the concentration camps staring back. It will happen when he recognizes the certain lifestyles associated with colors and why some roll up their windows in certain parts of the city. It will happen when he learns why certain friendships and marriages can never be. When he hears the first harmless joke. It will happen.

I read somewhere that the colorblind actually have an advantage in certain situations. That, by analyzing shapes and patterns instead of color, their eyes are better at penetrating camouflages. The colorblind were considered useful in WWII with analyzing aerial photographs. They are also considered to be better at spotting prey in hunting parties. Their eyes cannot be fooled by color. It reminds me of a time when I was a child, when my nanny took me for a trip to the local park. When she was looking away, I ran into a group of summer camp children because they were playing a fun game. I saw my nanny looking for me. She looked and looked, but each time, walked right past. When she found me she apologized, saying that sometimes, all of you look the same. I didn’t know why she couldn’t find me. I was in front of her the whole time.

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