The black teenager wasn’t doing anything wrong; he had only walked to the store to buy candy. That simple venture would prove fatal. His resultant killing would galvanize the nation, not only in shock upon his death, but in outrage over a black-free jury’s failure to convict his killers.

I am referring, of course, to the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

Till, who lived in Chicago, was visiting family in the Delta town of Money, Mississippi that summer when he and several other young black boys skipped church to visit Bryant’s Grocery, a store owned by a local white couple, the Bryants. On a dare, Till allegedly whistled at 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, who was working at the store while her husband was away. She was so upset that she ran to retrieve a gun from her car, and the boys quickly left the store.

Upon Roy Bryant’s return from a shrimp hauling trip in Texas, he and his half-brother, John Milam, drove a pickup truck to the house where Till was staying, abducted him, tormented him mercilessly unto death, and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. Till’s bloated, mutilated body, with its dislodged eyeball, was almost unrecognizable as human. The images that came out of his open casket funeral so shocked the nation that Till’s death is now considered as a pivotal moment in America’s Civil Rights awakening.

Comparisons between the killings of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin were, perhaps, inevitable. And sure enough, those comparisons came swiftly last year after the nation learned of the 17-year-old Martin’s death at the hands of George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. When Zimmerman was found not guilty on Saturday, Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump declared, “Trayvon Martin will forever remain in the annals of history next to Medgar Evers and Emmett Till as symbols for the fight for equal justice for all.”

Yet for many living in self-professed “colorblind” America -- who maintain that color no longer matters in our society -- comparing the death of Trayvon Martin to the death of Emmett Till presents an affront to common decency and to our reverence for America’s proud, linear history of racial progress.

No serious person today, either on the right or the left of the ideological spectrum, disputes that Till’s murderers were acting out of racial hatred, or that it was a racist system that allowed his murderers to walk free. After all, Till’s killers proudly described their reasoning to the press.

“I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me,” Milam told Look magazine in 1956, “and I just made up my mind. ‘Chicago boy,’ I said, ‘I’m tired of ‘em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I’m going to make an example of you – just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’”

Today, we all know that Till’s death and the denial of justice to him and his family was the product of racism. After all, his killers explicitly said so, and they even used the n-word to drive the point home.

George Zimmerman did none of that. “He looks black,” was the extent of his acknowledgment of Martin’s skin color during a 911 call moments before the shooting. Otherwise, Zimmerman offered no overt racial basis for judging Martin to be a “real suspicious guy.” He just “looks like he’s up to no good,” Zimmerman said, or “he’s on drugs or something,” and, “he’s just walking around looking about.” Zimmerman, fearful that his target would escape before help could arrive, then added, “These assholes, they always get away.”

For post-racial America, nothing about Zimmerman’s call suggests Martin’s race as a factor. In fact, the absence of something akin to the n-word is enough to justify the dismissal of anyone who even suggests race may have played a role in the shooting. Such people are instead called “race-baiters,” accused of employing the tactics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton—two men who colorblind Americans often single out for contempt when explaining, with righteous indignation, that racism would go away if only people would just stop talking about it.

But if race wasn’t a factor, what was it about a 17-year-old boy in a hoodie that aroused such suspicion? What was it about a kid walking home from the store — armed with a can of Arizona Iced Tea and a bag of Skittles — that made Zimmerman so afraid? What was it about Martin that so enraged Zimmerman to describe this unknown kid as an “asshole” and a “fucking punk,” without Martin having done anything wrong? Would Zimmerman have assumed the same of a white teen walking home that night?

The social etiquette of post-racial American society demands that we not even ask such questions. Even engaging in such a discussion is treated as an indignity to our neoliberal fantasy of a colorblind society, borne of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream and most certainly confirmed by Barack Obama’s presidency.

Trayvon Martin may indeed assume his place as post-racial America’s Emmett Till. All the evidence in Till’s death pointed explicitly to race, and colorblind Americans accept that and condemn his killers accordingly. The circumstances in Martin’s death merely suggest that Martin’s race was likely a factor in Zimmerman’s judgment of him. But no matter how apparent those suggestions may be, colorblind Americans reject any attempts to even discuss them.

As Trayvon Martin’s killing illustrates, colorblindness hasn’t brought us closer to a place where color no longer matters. It’s merely blinded us to matters of color.