Rethinking Colour-blindness: When Treating Everyone the Same Isn’t Fair
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“Treat everyone the same” is one of the most enduring ideas in education. It sounds fair. It sounds right. But in practice, it can make some of the most important realities in our classrooms harder to see and harder to talk about. I remember a student once telling me that another child had made a comment about their skin. I responded quickly: “We treat everyone the same here.” It felt like the right thing to say at the time – calm, fair, reassuring. But looking back, I can see that in trying to resolve the moment, I also shut down the conversation it needed.
Research in Australian primary classrooms suggests that this commitment to equality often takes particular forms – forms that can unintentionally limit how we respond to difference and to racism itself (Walton et al., 2014). These are not failures of intent. They are patterns of practice that grow out of deeply held beliefs about fairness.
Walton and colleagues identify three common approaches shaped by egalitarian thinking. These approaches do not reflect different levels of commitment to fairness. They reflect different understandings of what fairness requires.
This is the version many of us were trained into. Fairness is understood as treating all students the same, regardless of difference.
We say:
- “Everyone follows the same rules.”
- “I don’t treat anyone differently.”
Here, difference is downplayed or treated as irrelevant. Racism, if it is acknowledged at all, is often positioned as something from the past or as an individual issue.
The result is that existing inequalities can be overlooked, because equal treatment is assumed to produce fair outcomes – even when students are not starting from the same place.
In this approach, teachers may recognise difference, but avoid talking about race and racism directly.
In practice:
- race is not named
- discussions are redirected or softened
- “safe” topics (food, festivals, celebrations) are prioritised
This silence is often shaped by uncertainty. But it also means that the social meaning of difference is left unexplored.
This connects with a broader pattern in schools. As I said in a 2025 post on Harmony Day, the language of inclusion can sometimes prioritise comfort over honesty – particularly when it avoids more difficult conversations about difference and inequality.
Here, fairness is understood not as sameness, but as achieving more equitable outcomes.
Teachers:
- recognise that students have different experiences and starting points
- acknowledge racial and cultural differences
- and engage explicitly with racism and inequality
In these classrooms, difference is not avoided. It becomes a way of helping students understand how the world works. Teachers may also recognise that unequal support or attention is sometimes necessary to address inequity.
At the same time, there is often an expressed hope that one day race will not shape people’s opportunities. Colour-blindness becomes an ideal to work toward, rather than a description of current reality.
What this research asks us to confront
What makes this research difficult to sit with is how familiar some of these approaches are. Procedural-justice colour-blindness and colourmuteness, in particular, sit comfortably within the everyday language of fairness that many of us use – and were taught to use.
But they do not lead us in the same direction as distributive-justice colour-blindness, which engages more directly with inequality.
When fairness is enacted through sameness, or when conversations about race are avoided altogether, opportunities to explore what students are noticing, experiencing or questioning can be missed. Comments are smoothed over, discussions are redirected, and moments that could open up deeper understanding are closed down.
Rethinking fairness in practice
This is where teacher confidence and capability matter. As Walton et al. (2014) and more recent Australian research suggest, the extent to which we engage in explicit and critical discussions about racism is closely tied to how prepared we feel to have them (Janes, 2026). Avoidance is often less about belief than about uncertainty and points to gaps in knowledge and support.
What this research points to is not a rejection of fairness, but a shift in how it is understood in practice. Approaches that acknowledge difference, engage directly with racism, and recognise the need for unequal responses to unequal conditions make more of those classroom moments possible – rather than closing them down.
Rethinking colour-blindness, then, is about noticing which version of fairness we are enacting, and what that makes possible in our classrooms.
References
Janes, S. (2026). “It makes you nervous when you start talking about racism”: Shining light on teacher educators’ experiences of anti-racist pedagogy in Australian teacher education. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 46(1), 252–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2024.2342552
Walton, J., Priest, N., Kowal, E., White, F., Brickwood, K., Fox, B., & Paradies, Y. (2014).
Talking culture? Egalitarianism, color-blindness and racism in Australian elementary schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 39, 112–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.01.003
Additional Resources
Student Activities
Activities that allow students to explore their own cultural identity while learning about the negative impact of stereotyping are helpful.
- Many of our free online interactive lessons for students address identity and stereotyping and racism including: My communities (Y3-4), What are you wearing? (Y5-6), Difference and Discrimination (Y7-8), Defining Identities (Y9-10)
- Racism No Way has lessons on Identity, Difference and Prejudice for K-2.
- Don’t forget the Australian Human Rights Commission’s classroom resources on racism.
Professional Learning
Learning that has a focus on identifying, discussing, and challenging racism is particularly useful. Explore our free online interactive modules for teachers including:
- Responding to Racism & Harmful Language, is an introductory module to prepare teachers and school staff for the face to face or Zoom workshop, Responding to Racism and Harmful Language in the Classroom. It is intended as a micro module to maximise the skills-based content in the face to face workshop.
- Cohesion in Diversity: Developing Cultural Awareness has a section called, How can we help students move beyond stereotypes and respect diverse practices?
Further Exploration
These short articles offer valuable insights:
Al-Natour, R. (2020, November 23). Are children colour blind, innocent and inherently not racist? Charles Sturt University. https://news.csu.edu.au/opinion/are-children-colour-blind-and-inherently-not-racist (CSU News)
- Mayfield, V. (2021, February 1). Learning to challenge racial “colorblindness.” Educational Leadership, 78(5), 33–37. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/learning-to-challenge-racial-colorblindness. For a longer read consider her book: Mayfield, V. (2020). Cultural competence now: 56 exercises to help educators understand and challenge bias, racism, and privilege. ASCD.
About the Author
Kathleen (she/her) is a former primary school teacher, born on Mandandanji Country in Roma and now living and working on Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi Country on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. Her family came to Australia from Scotland and Ireland in the late 1800s. Kathleen’s work as an educator reflects her commitment to social justice, peace, democratic processes, and sustainability.
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Copyright
Metadata © Together for Humanity (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Together for Humanity (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Together for Humanity (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Together for Humanity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Stage: All
- Curriculum: All
- Topics: Racism, Identity