In 2016, Tomi Lahren, right-wing talk show host on Fox Nation, opened up during an emotional interview on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah and revealed a rare condition she’s lived with her entire life. “I don’t see color,” she told Noah, holding back tears during a poignant discussion about the Ferguson protests. Despite her impairment, Lahren has since courageously continued her work, delivering sharp opinions on American politics and inspiring her fellow visually-impaired fans to not let their conditions define them. We sat down with Lahren for an inside look into how she copes with her condition both personally and professionally.
JS: So, how are you these days?
TL: I’m good, clear-eyed as ever!
JS: Haha, it’s nice you still have a sense of humor about your condition.
TL: You know, it’s funny you say that. As someone who’s disadvantaged, humor plays a huge role in my life. Especially in my line of work. Like a couple months ago, I made a tweet about quarantining being like slavery. I find that jokes like these tend to bring people together rather than pull them apart. And I want to emphasize that last bit—that we’re all just people. One human race, really, because I for one do NOT see color. You know, some of my more conservative friends don’t even see shape. They just see people as amorphous grey ectoplasms, hovering from place to place without function or form. Think about that for a second. That’s how unprejudiced some of us right-wingers really are.
JS: Wow, that’s pretty inspiring. But surely you must find your condition frustrating at times, right?
TL: Of course. I mean, take the Black Lives Matter movement. I literally don’t see color. So when some liberal snowflake reminds me that black lives matter, I’m just like, wait, whose lives exactly? It makes me feel so isolated! I mean, I’m being shut out of an entire movement. Imagine that. Imagine going through your whole life feeling different. Feeling like you don’t belong. Feeling like you don’t have access to certain opportunities. Feeling like society is systemically rigged against you simply because of how you were born.
JS: That must be really hard for you.
TL: It’s something I have to live with every day. Luckily, there’s a pretty sizable colorblind community here in the U.S. Howard Schultz, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Scott from The Office—I have a really great support network as you can imagine.
JS: I’m sure it’s great to know there are others out there. Do you ever wish you weren’t colorblind?
TL: You know, I get asked that a lot. But I always have the same answer: I consider my condition a blessing. I mean, I’m literally biologically incapable of being racist. How great is that? Back in 2016, I wrote a tweet comparing Black Lives Matter to the KKK. Sure, I had to delete the tweet because it was deemed racist by the mainstream media. But nobody saw things from my perspective. I don’t see color. Color just seems so…trivial to me. So, Black Lives Matter, the KKK—they’re all the same. They all just need to stop focusing on race so much! Anyways, somehow, in all this controversy, the media tells people that I’m the enemy! That I’m the one who has to say sorry for having a post-racial perspective! At the end of the day, it’s stuff like this that just makes me stronger. I’m not defined by my condition.
JS: Wow, so would you say that you’re largely misunderstood, then?
TL: Oh, I’m definitely misunderstood. I mean, sure, my network may have a history of exhibiting a huge racial bias. And sure, I’m not really friends with any black people in my personal life. And it’s true, just last year, I might’ve interviewed one of the first black people I’ve ever interviewed in my media career even though I’ve been a political commentator for six years. But you have to understand: that’s all just a coincidence. I. Don’t. See. Color.
J.S. Right. Changing gears to a more news-related question. What are your thoughts on the George Floyd protests going on right now?
TL: A lot of people are neglecting that violence against police officers has gotten completely out of hand. The protests have turned into a war on cops. We need to start thinking more about how blue lives matter too—sorry, did I say ‘blue’ lives? I meant ‘all’ lives. Because again, I don’t see color. Even when it’s not race-based and purely serves as a metaphor for how it’s actually police officers who are being systematically discriminated against and police officers who have suffered a history of persecution that spans as far back as the creation of America itself.
JS: That makes a lot of sense since police departments grew out of slave patrols. Anyway, I think that’s all the time we have for today. I want to end on a fun note for readers—what’s your favorite color?
TL: Actually?
JS: Yeah!
TL: Haha, for real?
JS: Sure.
TL: …white.
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