What If Discrimination was Based on Eye Color?
I was recently walking my dogs in a leafy neighborhood in Potomac, MD on a breezy and bright Friday afternoon. It’s an affluent community, where people typically drive newer model foreign cars and everyone waves to everyone (even though no one truly knows anyone).
As my dogs were joyously sniffing around and occasionally marking their territory, I greeted fellow walkers, children on bikes, and the occasional passing car, spending most of my time untangling my feet from intertwining leashes and thinking about what I’d make myself for dinner.
Absent-mindedly, I walked towards a slowly-approaching Nissan Sentra. The older-model, smaller car was a bit faded, but well-kept. It was driven by a middle-aged black man, wearing a black Adidas baseball cap, his elbow gently resting on the rolled-down window sill. He slowed nearly to a stop as he approached me, and our eyes met briefly. He smiled sheepishly, perhaps in hindsight even apologetically, and — unprompted — pointed up towards a sticker on the corner of his windshield.
DoorDash.
He was a DoorDash driver. And he seemingly felt that his presence could be uncomfortable and unsettling enough for me, a white man probably about his age, that he felt a need to point to his DoorDash sticker, to justify his presence in the neighborhood.
He was past me before I had a chance to respond, one way or the other. And come to think of it, what would have been an appropriate response? A thumbs up?
I shouldn’t have to explain to you why the driver felt that he should point to the sticker. I’m not saying he needed to, I’m saying he felt he needed to. If you know why, you may skip the rest of this paragraph and the next two… If you genuinely don’t know why (or want to pretend you do not); if you won’t accept that that driver had the right to at least feel that it was better for his safety and mine to point to his sticker, then this opinion is especially for you.
You weren’t expecting that, were you?…
But first, my see-no-evil brother or sister, here’s why: According to a study by researchers Chad E. Forbes, Christine L. Cox, Toni Schmader, and Lee Ryan published in 2012 in Oxford Academic, and reported on in 2015 in the Academic ePublication The Conversation, Human ares wired for prejudice. The mere existence of prejudice is gross, but because humans are wired for it, it is nothing to be ashamed of — any more than going to the bathroom, while arguably gross, is not something to be ashamed of. Being prewired for prejudice is a scientific fact that simply needs to be accepted, and no proof of it should be demanded. Just as I am sure you trust me that I have gone to the bathroom today (and that you do not need to see any proof).
What matters is not whether it is true (it is) it’s what we can do about it. Because what’s just as interesting, in my view, is that the same study also concluded that humans also have “the ability to control reactionary implicit bias.” (1)
What does that mean? It means that “brains can control bias” (2). If our brain can control bias, it intrinsically means we are all able to recognize that there are times where bias would be inappropriate and wrong. Even silly and ridiculous.
It depends on the context.
So let’s try to broaden the context.
You know what’s interesting? According to World Atlas, 55-79% of the world’s population has brown eyes, which makes it the most common eye color in the world. After brown, 8%-10% of the world population has blue eyes, 5% amber eyes, 5% hazel eyes, 2% green eyes, and less than 1% each have gray, or red/violet eyes. (3)
Why is that interesting? Because if you put that up against the population of the United States in 2017, that stacks up somewhat evenly against some critical demographics. According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 61% of Americans in 2017 were white, about the same as brown-eyed people in the world. America was 12% black, not much different than the percentage of the world population’s with blue eyes (8–10%). 4.5% of Americans are gay, according to a study by Gallup, not materially different than the percentage of people with amber eyes (5%). A Pew Research study shows that about 3.2% of the U.S. population are undocumented immigrants, not much different than the percentage of hazel eyed people (~5%). The best estimate of the percentage of the U.S. population that is transgender is 0.6% (6), about the same as Americans with gray or red/violet eyes. 22% of the American workforce is over the age of 55 (7), about the same combined total as of all the non-brown eyed people in the world (about 25.6%)
Before you doze off, try to consider why this analogy is more profound than what meets the eye (no pun intended):
How would you feel if you received a prison sentence that was almost 20 percent longer than another person, for the same crime, simply because your eyes were blue?
Ridiculous, right? Preposterous.
But did you know that “Black men who commit the same crimes as white men receive federal prison sentences that are almost 20 percent longer on average?” (7)
Would you agree with me that the single and immutable characteristic of having been born with blue eyes — as 8–10% of people worldwide are — should have absolutely no impact on a blue-eyed person’s right to expect and demand to receive equal justice under the law? Surely you would agree with me that a superficial characteristic such as a person’s eye color is an utterly absurd predictor of a person’s nature, capacity for crime or violence, or value to society.
And yet, for a nearly equal percentage of Americans who also have a single and immutable characteristic — in their case, the dark pigmentation of their skin — that superficial characteristic dramatically increases their odds of receiving a sentence that is 20% longer.
Why is that any less absurd than your longer sentence, Mr. Blue Eyes?
Let’s explore other such absurdities that impact other, often discriminated against groups, and simply swap the group type for the eye color that has an approximately equal representation.
We’ll start with a short quiz. For each of the following questions, answer on a scale of zero (being utterly ridiculous), to 10 (being entirely justified), how would you feel if the following statements were statements of fact:
- 31% of Americans opposed your right to get married to the person whom you love, simply because you and your beloved have amber eyes.
- As a result of your blue eyes, you are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police than a person with brown eyes.
- You are fleeing from a place where you and your children are under constant harassment and threat of violence. You arrive at the edge of a safe place, but are denied asylum and protection, simply because you have hazel eyes and the government has decided it does not want more people with hazel eyes.
- A merchant refused to sell you the same wedding cake they just sold to a brown eyed person, simply because you had amber or hazel eyes.
- It is 47% harder for you to find a job simply because your eye color is a color other than brown.
- Suppose you had no choice but to disclose your eye color on your resume, and just because your eyes were blue you received 50% less callback for interviews than people with brown eyes.
- You have gray eyes. As a result, 32% of Americans believe they have the right to tell you where to go to the bathroom.
If you’re a person with any kind of common sense, your score on the above quiz is zero. It’s impossible for me to imagine that anyone would justify any of these acts of discrimination merely on the basis of eye color. After all, people don’t choose their eye color! Eye color is an immutable characteristic, a bingo ball number we received that none of us had any say in.
And yet, for some reason, many of us are okay discriminating for equally immutable characteristics as race, sexual orientation, or age. Why is it we all agree that it an absolutely ridiculous proposition to discriminate against someone because of their eye color, and yet for race, sexual orientation, age, gender — all equally immutable rolls of the genetic bingo balls — some of us feel justified discriminating?
Because the numbers say that we do discriminate against those other groups.
31% of Americans oppose gay marriage. Roughly the same percentage of Americans are gay as those whose eye color is amber.
Young black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police than young white men. The percentage of African Americans is about the same as the percentage of people worldwide who are born with blue eyes.
60–80% of asylum claims are now denied, a number that is rising. Undocumented immigrants in America represent about the same percentage of the human population in the world with hazel eyes.
The Supreme Court last year ruled in favor of a baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple.
“Older women received 47% fewer callbacks for administrative jobs than younger women” (8). The percentage of older employees in the workforce is about the same as the combined total of all non-brown eyed employees combined.
“White” sounding names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews than “black” sounding names.
32% of Americans favor transgender bathroom restrictions. 0.6% of Americans are transgender, about the same as the percentage of Americans with gray eyes.
Immutable characteristics are immutable characteristics. A cynic might say, well by this rationale, a blind person should be allowed to drive; a dead person should be allowed to vote; a chicken should be eligible to run for president.
I mentioned above that some discrimination is just, some isn’t. Not allowing blind people to drive is justifiable discrimination, because being blind measurably impacts your ability to execute the task of driving. Therefore, your immutable characteristic does, in fact, justify a restriction. And the same restriction would apply if you were of any race, any age, any sexual orientation, any eye color.
The same logic applies to not allowing dead people to vote. They are dead. All dead people are treated equally, regardless of the immutable characteristics they were born with while living.
And Chickens running for president? Hmm. I actually think we may need to give that one some serious consideration!
Science proves humans are capable of controlling their bias. If we’ve been able to condition ourselves that some forms of discrimination based on immutable characteristics such as eye color are utterly ridiculous and unjust, we may be able to condition ourselves to broaden our view of which immutable characteristics are equally ridiculous and unjust grounds for discrimination. We simply need to recognize that bias on the basis of immutable characteristics is repugnant, regardless of the characteristic.
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Tal J Zlotnitsky, an entrepreneur from Potomac, Md., doesn’t walk his dogs nearly enough. But this time he did.
