On a personal level, I despise Matthews so I’m not motivated to defend him, however, I give him a pass on this comment.

Most people can’t help but notice the color difference of others, regardless of whether they feel or express any sort of bias or racism, they are aware that the person they are talking to is Black, or Chinese, or any other highly visible physical difference in appearance.

Having personally spent the majority of my time associating with non-Caucasians, I get that same reaction Matthews was genuinely surprised at, that I just forget I’m talking to any sort of “minority” they are just people to me. And by this I don’t mean that I lose any sort of bias, I mean that I just no longer notice that they are Black or Chinese or whatever, they are just people, and look not different to me than other people. It is a difficult thing to explain.

I recall the first time I met my close friends Grandmother from Haiti who spoke only Creole. Her exclamation of seeing me was “Oh, he is a gra neg” a big Negro, she didn’t use the word ‘Blan’ which would mean a white or a foreigner, whereas a ‘neg’ would mean a man who is ‘one of us’ white or black.

It is a sort of color-blindness that one acquires from familiarly. Matthews probably doesn’t spend much time in situations where Black people don’t stand out visually being in the minority, so this was a new experience for him, to watch a Black speaker and completely forget that the person had a different skin colour. Thus I can understand his reaction which appears honest and came as a surprise to him.