In our discussions over the past few weeks I found myself taking away the most from our conversation about “learned perception” from Linda Martin Alcoffs’ “Towards a Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment”. What stood out to me was the idea that seeing is not neutral. The way we perceive others is often influenced by ideas which we have learned throughout our lives. I assumed that even physical characteristics which seem like objective truths are usually perceived neutrally, but this is not the case.
We do not simply see a person and neutrally record what is physically there. What we see and how we interpret it are shaped entirely by what we have already learned. These insights are developed over the course of a lifetime and come from culture, history, media, stereotypes, and previous experiences. In other words, there is no perception of what is visible that is completely free of value. Before we even consciously interpret what we see we have already learned to associate certain appearances with particular ideas. This becomes especially important when discussing race because racial stereotypes can influence how we perceive and interpret people before we know anything about them as individuals.
Learned perceptual practice can be applied to many racist incidents. The key is to ask: How did existing insights affect what people believed they were seeing?
The murder of Emmett Till demonstrates how these learned racial meanings can have devastating consequences. Emmet Till was kidnapped and murdered after being accused of behaving inappropriately towards a white woman. The assumption of guilt was derived from the cultural idea that Black men and boys are sexual threats to White women. As a result, instead of being perceived as a young Black boy, he was viewed through the racist stereotype, making him dangerous and threatening.
Another example arises in the killings of Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery. Two similar situations in which Black men are viewed as threats while engaging in ordinary activities. Martin was walking through a neighborhood, while Arbery was jogging through one. Neither’s actions were inherently suspicious, yet both were perceived through assumptions that connected Black men to danger and criminal behavior. These cases demonstrate learned perceptual practice because what was physically visible was given meaning through existing stereotypes. It was not their race that made their actions threatening but instead learned ideas about Black men which influenced how those actions were interpreted.
Essentially, we do not see first and assign meaning afterward. What we have already learned influences the act of seeing itself. In this way, seeing is not neutral because what we perceive is shaped by the meanings, values, and assumptions we have already learned.
I really enjoyed reading your post and learning from your perspective. You broke it down so succinctly when you wrote, “In other words, there is no perception of what is visible that is completely free of value.” This highlights how everything we see comes attached with bias, whether intended or not. Because of this learned understanding, our perception of the world around us is inherently imperfect and skewed. While that doesn’t mean we have to dissect our every waking thought, it emphasizes how vital it is to remain curious and open to changing what we think we know.
Your distinction between what people “believed they were seeing” versus what was actually happening, is absolutely spot on. The examples of Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery are incredibly important and powerful. These senseless killings show how engaging in an objectively harmless activity, walking through your own neighborhood, resulted in tragedy. And not because either of them was doing anything “wrong”. Neither Trayvon, a teenage boy visiting family, nor Ahmaud, a young man out for a jog, were doing anything dangerous, illegal, and/or suspicious. Instead, someone simply saw a Black man and chose to trust their biased perception over the reality of their innocence.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and perspective. Your insights were helpful in tying these concepts into opportunities for growth and real-world impact.
Hi Makayla, I really enjoyed your blog post. Perception is really a slippery slope. It’s so easy for our environment to control our perception, and I find it really sad that most people do not go into the world with open minds. There is so much comfort in what you already know that most people will never escape the values they’ve held all their lives, and to me that is a shame.
When it comes to race, I always hear the joke, “I don’t see race; I hate everyone equally”, and these will end up being the most bigoted people you have ever met in your life, constantly going for the same minority groups despite “hating everyone equally”.
Or the idea that their prejudice is from “pattern recognition” or what’s “just true”. There are some people you cannot speak reason into, and some may never change the way they think, and to me that is truly a shame.
This post really resonates with me. I’ve never understood when people claim that they don’t see color or make the claim that race no longer matters and imply that we now live in some sort of utopia where racism no longer exists. How we perceive people based on race is so deeply ingrained within our culture, so much so that systemic racism has been shown to biologically impact health outcomes. It’s nice someone may not want to be insensitive or treat others differently based off of race however when you ignore it you ignore part of a picture. Imagine if doctors ignored race, then we wouldn’t know that sickle cell anemia primarily affects people of African descent.