Osagie Kingsley Obasogie (born August 21, 1977) is a law professor and bioethicist at UC Berkeley.
[2] In Blinded by Sight, Obasogie established through interview research that the perception of race does not depend on the ability to see individuals' skin colors; rather, people who are not able to see are nevertheless able to assemble contextual cues to determine others' races, and this can affect how they behave towards others.
[3] Obasogie argues that this sociological phenomenon has immediate implications for jurisprudence, for example in considerations about the Equal Protection Clause, where the legal consensus rests on the idea that a person's racial identity is visually obvious and immediately knowable.
[4] The book was noted for employing a successful research design to recover original insights which challenge the seemingly obvious assumption that race is communicated visually, contributing to sociological, legal, and ethical theories about race.
[7] Obasogie has been a frequent media commentator and analyst on topics like racial justice and medical ethics, publishing opinion articles in outlets such as The New York Times,[8] The Washington Post,[9] and The Atlantic.