The Style of Color Blindness by Kyle Lindemann

That chapter of this book was interesting. It gave five examples of the most common styles used in conversation to avoid sounding racist. At first I was confused as to what this meant but as I continued reading it enlightened me to things I noticed in conversation everyday. The five main methods are as follows;

Avoidance: pretty self-explanatory avoiding any sort of racial oriented views or ideas during conversations.
Semantic moves: I’m not sure if this is correct but what I gathered was something like small bumpers or cushions before dropping the racially bent phrase.
Voice Projections: Dramatic change in tone or manner when talking about race related issues.
Diminutives: I didn’t know what that meant and I looked it up and the definition is as follows "a very small person or thing" So when stated small colorblind race talk I'm assuming he means like small racial slurs or stereo types in conversations.
Incoherence: when individuals are confronting with racial topics or issues they become completely dumbfounded and confused.

A scientist conducted a study with MU students and DAS respondents asking various questions concerning opposite race and documented the various responses breaking down what certain phrases in conversation would mean.

For example: the conductor would ask what races are your friends or who you hang out with and within a simple response the student would use racial slurs unknowingly or seemingly out of her time period as the book states like "colored people" or "Negros" this of course was not common for every response but came up on occasion. Another interesting fact would be how students would use buffers like "I'm not racist, but...." to justify the negative comment about to be made. Many students claim not to say racist things but then came out and openly admitted to telling racist jokes to their peers in non-public settings. Many other things noted by the doctor was the "I'm not black so I don’t know" act. And simply by using that phrase could claim ignorance on any and all racial topics and "unknowingly” say something that may be inappropriate without any negative repercussions because they didn’t know any better. My overall favorite idea of avoiding racial tensions in conversation is the "anything but race approach" and the "They are the racist ones." In anything but race people tend to avoid to social issue like interface marriages and put the pressure on what would the children think or feel when they grow up. Attempting to avoid the main answer as to why they disagree with interracial marriages. Finally the attempt at explain how they are the racist ones by demanding affirmative action, compensation for slavery, and "isolate" themselves from others out side of their racial group, is solely the opinion of the speaker and in turn ends up making the sound racist regardless.