The definition of racial colour-blindness as it relates to racism and inequality was driven home by two American experts at last night's Bermuda Race Relations Initiative (BRRI) at the Bermuda College.

The panel discussion and forum, titled 'I don't see Colour: Colour Blindness... Myth or Reality?' attracted a racially balanced crowd of more than 200 people. To kick things off, Dr. Helen Neville, who is black and was one of the two American panellists, told of an incident which occurred at a high school in the US in which blacks were singled out.

"It was an incident that happened in 2003 at Stratford High School. It's a predominantly white high school, maybe about 90 percent white.

"So the principal one day decided the school had a drug problem at the school so what he did was to organise a drug raid which was videotaped.

"On the video, which was featured in the US national media, you see these officers coming into the school and 'randomly' selecting students to open up their bags, get on the ground and being handcuffed.

"It was pretty brutal. They ended up detaining almost 100 high school students... and all of those high school students 'happened' to be black. So it was clear that they (the students) were targeted. "At the end, not one of the students detained had any drugs on them.

"Most white parents were saying it wasn't a big deal because 'drugs are a critical problem there' but the black parents were outraged."

Dr. Neville then linked her story to the problem with people who claim to be colour blind.

She defined colour blindness this way: "It is a belief system and a legitimising ideology that further serves to legitimise inequalities that exist in society."

She spoke of whites and some blacks who in a 21st century believe that racism is a thing of the past and that everyone has a level playing field.

"This belief system actually camouflages the existence of structural inequality and it hides the fact that we have kids, for example, underperforming in schools and that the prison system is overpopulated by blacks and that people aren't earning the same."

Her colleague, Dr. Lisa Spanierman, who is white, introduced herself by admitting: "I study white people."

She then focused on ways to get whites to become more involved in the anti-racism movement. Once I realised racism actually existed," she spoke personally, "I just saw it everywhere. I grew up in New York City and in a suburb in New Jersey. It wasn't until I took this certain professor's class in university... I didn't really see racism, as a white person, but then I saw it was everywhere."

Dr. Spanierman, to much approval from the audience, said the media was in part to blame for some of the aspects of racism.

She stated: "The media pumps us with horrible negative images of people of colour all the time."

One man, during the question and answer session, asked "how can we change the negative perception in the media which is against people of colour... how can we change the things they write?"

He then continued: "Perhaps (people in the media) should attend forums like this," his remark drew widespread laughter from the crowd. "Some people believe everything they read and the media in Bermuda is a huge place which perpetuates racism."

Dr. Neville received her Doctorate in Counselling Psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and is currently a professor of educational psychology and African American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana.

Dr. Neville co-founded and co-directed the Centre for Multicultural Research in the US.

Her research on issues of race, racism and racial identity has appeared prominently in the Journal of Counselling Psychology, in the US.

Similarly, Dr. Spanierman is also a professor at the University of Illinois. Her recent publications on the psychosocial costs of racism to white individuals and cultural competence also has appeared in the Journal.

She has studied racism and how it relates to whites since 1995.