From dictionary.com -
Racism: a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

I’m not sure why I was so surprised
But I was
I thought that racism was a white person disease
This week (black Friday) I learned different
I learned that most people are ethnocentric and
people that I thought should know better are not exempt

I was waiting outside to get a great deal on a computer
I figured that 3 hours waiting to save $250 meant that I was making over $80/hour
and that made the wait palatable

There was a kid of Middle Eastern decent in the line
He could not pronounce “microwave” correctly because his native tongue could not make the “w” sound
After a few hours in line this kid struck up a conversation with a native Spanish speaker
They talked about many things and eventually about the fact that this woman had a son the boy’s age
It was then that the boy made what I consider to be a racist comment
“I think I know your son. Does he play soccer?”
The mom replied, “No, he plays trumpet in the youth symphony.”
Just because this woman’s son is Hispanic, the boy thought he played soccer. Really? Shouldn’t he know better. Lesson of the day learned.

Then the mom, to which he had been speaking, made her own comment a few minutes later that just about knocked me over. She began to make fun of Chinese people and the way they speak. This was even more of a surprise to me because there were two Chinese girls just in front of me in line. Lesson reinforced.

As part of the dominant society I take for granted that those who are put down should be joining together rather than working against each other. I guess racism is truly colorblind.

I grew up in a great atmosphere with loving parents and good friends in a small Arkansas town, but, though I didn’t realize it until later, there was something missing. All through school and college and for the few years after that I lived in the Dream Hometown, there was a glaring, yet at the time unnoticed, fact about my life.

All of my friends looked the same.

Of course there is not anything inherently wrong with having a group of friends composed solely of middle class white people, but from an outside perspective it now seems obviously incomplete. This can be easily accounted for by looking at the town I grew up in, which was around 95% white, and the college I attended, where I could probably count on two hands the number of minorities not brought in to play sports. Again, there is nothing particularly wrong about it. This is just the way things were.

Today, after living in the Memphis area for nearly 6 years, my perspective is far different. I was talking with Andy, my best friend growing up, on the phone a few days ago when I realized and mentioned to him that the majority of my closest friends now are African-American. But it even goes beyond friendship, they are a part of our family and we are a part of theirs. For the second year in a row we will be spending Thanksgiving Day here (we’ll be going to Beebe Friday) and eating the holiday dinner with a family we dearly love – they are like surrogate grandparents to our kids. Last year we ate with other friends to whom we were very close. At the top of this entry you can see a picture of our oldest daughter Rachel with her “boyfriend” Thomas and his sister (and one of Rachel’s best friends) Kennedy, both of whom come from a family that is, well, our family.

Beyond anything else, I’m glad that my children have the opportunity to grow up colorblind and around a group of people in which the color of one’s skin does not make one an anomaly. I like to think that we are living out the words of the great Dr. Martin Luther King when he said that, “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” The dream is real and alive and possible, and believe me, it’s worth it.

I might as well talk about this…

I started this blog so I could talk about some things I did not feel free to in the regular world.

I am color blind, and I love to paint. In fact I make art for a living, that’s why I never talk about this.

Art is so subjective anyway that if you tried to point out that something was the “wrong” color I would not know what you were talking about.

I lay out the pallet from warm to cool and start painting. I know the names of the colors from the label and the values and how they react to toning with white.

Then I paint based on relative association and tone.

Thats it.

At what age should you start talking to your children about race?

Birgitte Vittrup of the Children’s Research Lab at the University of Texas tried to answer that question in her 2006 study. A recent article in Newsweek focused on the results of her study — See Baby Discriminate. Kids as young as 6 months judge other based on skin color. What’s a parent to do? [btw, I hated the title of the article--it begged for a small readership].

While the study was extensive, and I didn’t agree with much of it, it showed that the majority of [white] families simply could not bring themselves to discuss race with their 5-7 year olds. “We don’t want to have these conversations with our child. We don’t want to point out skin color.” 

According to Vittrup, hardly any of these white parents had ever talked to their children directly about race. They might have asserted vague principles—like “Everybody’s equal” or “God made all of us” or “Under the skin, we’re all the same”—but they’d almost never called attention to racial differences. They wanted their children to grow up “colorblind”.

The article also mentioned that in homes of people of color, race is discussed much more openly. I can attest to that in our home. I know from a very early age, we have been careful that our children don’t buy what the media sells (i.e. beauty = blond hair + blue eyes + white skin). It is very much apart of our lives on a daily basis. I personally think efforts are misguided if children are raised to be “colorblind”. Color is the very first thing people see and our society and history dictate the inability to be such.  

I’m curious to hear what other families have to say, how do you talk to your children about race? at what age do you begin?

*colourblind.

I took this test to measure my colour blindness. It turns out I am not so good but I think I knew this:

A score of 40. Which isn’t all that great since you’re aiming to get a zero. However, that print screen was of my second attempt. The first, which I didn’t think to keep a copy of, showed that I had major problems distinguishing greens and blues with a score of 57…my third attempt told me I had issues with greens and blues once again with a score of 63. I wouldn’t like to say how accurate this is but I imagine it’s not all that – a lot would depend on your screens colour calibration et al. But let us not make excuses, I’ve always known I’ve had trouble with greens and blue, simply from conversations with people along the lines of ‘Oh, that’s a nice blue colour!’, ‘No, that’s green.’ ‘Oh.’

It has now baffled me somewhat that the test is telling me I have trouble with reds and, to an extent, purples. Do I have no concept of colour at all? Maybe I see the world in black and white.

It would explain a few things.

Listening to: Bat For Lashes – Travelling Woman

“What color is this?”
I hold up a crayon to my two-year old as we start to draw a picture with her crayons.
“Umm… Green!” she replies.
“Thanks”
I wasn’t quizzing her on her knowledge of colors. I wanted to draw a tree and wasn’t sure if the crayon I was holding should be used for the leaves or the trunk. I’m colorblind.

“What do you see?”

You probably see a 74. I see a 21.

“What about stop lights?”

I’ve learned various ways to handle colors in my environment. For stop lights, the red and green are actually designed to be different looking so the green looks almost white to my eyes. There are also other clues that can be used: the red light is always on top or on the left when mounted sideways. In other situations, if I really can’t see the color I’ll ask someone. Usually my wife or daughter can help me out, but I’ve also asked complete strangers. Sometimes once I’ve been told something is red or green I’m able to then see the colors. I think somehow my brain compensates for what my eyes miss.

I also change my behavior to help avoid the issue. The color of clothes I buy is affected. As an engineer I often make charts of data. My charts will always have a color and shape associated with each different label. This is good practice for everybody: if you print out a report/presentation it should be legible in color OR black and white.

“I thought this was a blog about board games?”

I was getting to that… Colorblindness definitely affects my board gaming. The most obvious (and generally least important) result is when I pick out my playing piece. I almost always pick blue. Yellow, white or black are my next choices. I generally avoid green, red, orange or brown. If each player in a game only has one token, it usually isn’t a problem keeping track of the colors (a conscious effort on my part at times). However, if there are several tokens and they will be moved around a lot (Carcassonne for example), I will sometimes ask other players not to use certain colors.

When the colors are a part of the game or can’t be avoided, it may be a challenge. I played Power Grid for the first time a few weeks ago. The board has a map with several regions, each a different color. We only had three players so only three of those regions are in play. I had a hard time figuring out which cities were in play and which were out. My first game of Ticket to Ride was also difficult. The colored train routes and cards were very similar to my eye.

Usually the colors aren’t a challenge and don’t effect my play, but not always. I already suffer from analysis paralysis in some games. The extra few seconds I need to concentrate on who-has-what-tokens-where can slow me down even more. To keep from slowing down game play, I may make a bad move because I didn’t realize that red enemy token was actually a green friendly one.

The colors may look alike, but the shapes don't.

And when the game is designed poorly (at least in color management), I try to adapt. In a second game of Power Grid, we blocked off the border of the regions we were using with the city tokens of a fourth color. It was a great help and makes me wonder why they didn’t draw boundaries between the colors. A game like Here I Stand looked confusing at first glance – the Ottoman green and Protestant Brown looked a lot alike. After playing, I realized it didn’t matter as those powers’ tokens never interact so I don’t have to worry about confusing the colors. And if it came down to it for a game I really liked that after repeated plays I still had troubles with – I would look at making my own board/tokens to eliminate any confusion. Fortunately, I haven’t had to do that…yet!

Numa recente aula de infografia que debatia o uso de cores em quadros estatísticos, surgiu uma pergunta curiosa: e se o leitor for daltônico?

Parecia absurdo, mas fui pesquisar. Sim, existem orientações específicas de usabilidade para atender a esse tipo de público.

E o site We Are Color Blind (“Nós Somos Daltônicos”) reúne algumas dessas informações.

Pra mim isso sim é uma grande novidade. E mais forma de atender a um público absolutamente de nicho (a deficiência visual, que dificulta o reconhecimento de determinadas cores, atinge cerca de 8% da população masculina mundial).

The study of the order and functionality of the spiral arrangement of leaves around a plant’s stem is called phyllotaxis.  This pattern is also consistently found in flower petals, pinecones, pineapples, etc.

Why are flowers beautiful?  (Bees are colorblind.)

Why are corals and creatures in the deepest (darkest) part of the ocean colored? With no light, they can’t be seen.  (Only the Designer Himself can enjoy them as His private amusement.)

To attribute phyllotaxis (see above) and  similar results to unaided random chance in an attempt to deny the entropy laws is to fly in the face of empirical reality.  Blindness to the elegance of design in the universe is, indeed, intentional and “willingly ignorant,” as Peter reminds us. (2 Peter 3:5)

It takes knowledge and wisdom of the highest order to produce such related phenomena.  Penetrate nature wherever the scientist may, and he will find that thought has been there before him.  And the creation itself is sufficient to hold us accountable, Paul reminds us. (Romans 1:20)

So, as John exhorts,

“Thou art worthy O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”  Revelation 4:11

Excerpt from Cosmic Codes by Dr. Chuck Missler

Pepsi has announced a new online community targeting African-American moms as a way to help that demographic inspire each other with their stories. It’s interesting to me that a company that makes a product called ONE is now trying to continue the troubling history in this country of separating people by race.

I had high hopes that social media, finally, would be one vehicle that would help us smash through the barriers erected by differences in the color of our skin and help us realize that we are all part of one race: the human race.

But now, marketers at Pepsi have decided that African-American moms are underrepresented and need a place to have their voices heard. Too bad their voices won’t be heard by anyone other than people exactly like them.

I’m a white dad, so obviously I can’t speak for black moms everywhere. I just wish marketing people at companies like Pepsi would realize they can’t either. First of all, who  asked them to? Who says black women can’t get on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and all the other outlets to have their voices heard? Who says they need a special place just to call their own — and that they can’t create one via Ning? Who says that black women aren’t smart enough to see right through this marketing trap? Who says we need to turn the Internet into a microcosm of real life, with its inherent racism and the segregation that results from it?

Just last month, we saw the passing of the 46th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I can’t help but wonder how inspirational and amazing he would find the technology of today and how it has transformed our abilities to see past race and look only at a person for what they are contributing to the conversation.

His infamous exclamations certainly ring true when you look at a social media outlet like Twitter, which helps meld us into a community that is not based on race, religion or nationality.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

“Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

I recently had a colleague who is just getting into social media make the following comment, and it punctuates what I’m trying to say in this post:

I find it fascinating that social media is generating social activity that did not exist before and bringing together people that otherwise would not have connected. Way fun.

It’s too bad major American brands like Pepsi can’t see the potential for social media to bring us together instead of another avenue to keep us apart.

I am closely related to Stephon Marbury..

He’s at it again folks, just when you think he might be a professional athlete he tweets some trash about being color blind and he is going to sue the NFL.. Now I realize that Chad is probably just messing around on twitter to garner more unneeded attention, but to ridicule and demean the league about a letter they sent is par for the course with this joke.. Why would you mock the league that has given you the privilege of getting paid to play football, and given you the platform to become the absolute douche-bag you are today.. Good luck suing the league over an obvious rules infraction that you blatantly committed, oh and guess what equipment managers are responsible to outfit everyone so your colorblind garbage is just that… GARBAGE.

Professional athletes need to shut their mouths and do their jobs that by the way they get paid handsomely for.

SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

-GRIZZ

Geek Facts: Impress Your Friends!!

WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE IT’S SPELLED “JAGERMEIFTER”???

The “long s” (ſ) is a form of the lowercase letter ’s’ formerly used (a LONG time ago) where ’s’ occurred in the middle or at the beginning of a word, for example ſinfulneſs (sinfulness) or Paradiſe Loſt (Paradise Lost).
The long ’s’ survives in elongated form, and with an italic-style curled descender, as the integral symbol ∫ used in calculus; Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz based the character on the Latin word summa (sum), which he wrote ſumma.
In Scandinavian and German-speaking countries, relics of the long ſ continue to be seen in signs and logos. Example: the Jägermeiſter logo.
Another survival of the long s was the abbreviation used in British English for shilling, as in 5/-, where the forward slash stood in for the long s which had been long forgotten by all but antiquarians.
(Wikipedia)

IF A TREE FALLS IN THE WOODS, AND THERE’S NO ONE AROUND TO HEAR IT, DOES IT MAKE A SOUND?

Sound waves impinge on the eardrums and pinnae (fleshy parts of your ear), setting off a chain of mechanical and neurochemial events, the end product of which is an internal mental image we call pitch. (The question was first posed by the Irish philosopher George Berkeley.) Simply, no–sound is a mental image created by the brain in response to vibrating molecules. Similarly, there can be no pitch without a human or animal present. A suitable measuring device can register the frequency made by the tree falling, but truly it is not pitch unless and until it is heard.
(This Is Your Brain On Music – The Science Of A Human Obsession, Daniel J. Levitin)

WHY IS THE SKY BLUE? (during mid-day sun)

As white light from the sun hits smaller gas molecules, some is absorbed, some passes right through, and some is scattered. Longer wavelengths tend to pass through (the sun looks yellowish) blue light tends to be scattered the most because it has a short wavelength. This scattered light reaches our eye from the rest of the sky, and the sky appears blue.
(Bobby Mercer)

DO BULLS REALLY HATE RED?

No, bulls are colorblind. The ability to perceive color requires a much larger brain than the bull has. The use of red is a tradition, it’s really the movement and teasing that the bulls hate.

NO PHONE SERVICE.

You’re in a building, but you’re not in the middle of nowhere. Why can’t you get phone service? (UTA cafeteria). Either the outside of the building is mostly metal or the rebar in the concrete of the building you’re in is acting as a Faraday cage. Michael Faraday theorized that electromagnetic waves travel around a hollow conducting cage. Think of Enemy Of The State (Will Smith, Gene Hackman 1998). A Faraday cage doesn’t need to be solid metal, just have holes small enough to block the e/m waves; like the door to a microwave: lets visible light out, keeps microwaves in.

any questions?

Not long ago, I realized that since beginning to unpack the presence and meaning of race in my day to day life, I have become, if anything, more aware of the physical appearance of people around me. I don’t think that anyone can be “colorblind,” and I don’t recall (even in my embarrassing, ignorant “my ancestors weren’t slave owners so why should I care” days of yore) ever claiming to be. After all, we all see the race of the people around us.

But what I mean is that I’ve become very aware of the race of everyone I encounter. The Fellow is no exception, although adding non-American-ness into the mix definitely changes the racial dynamic between us. But really- as I’m getting onto the subway, I notice the race of the people pushing on board alongside me. When I come in to work, I notice the skin tone of the people clipping into the elevators, and that of the people mopping the ground floor. I notice the color of people I pass on the street, people I sit next to in class, my SAT-prep students, people who serve me in restaurants or bars, the cashiers at the grocery store, people I bump in to by accident, men who make comments or approach me as I pass. Everyone. It’s been a while since skin color wasn’t something I homed in on directly.

There are some [white? probably mostly white] people that would suggest this tendency is “more racist” than pretending not to see skin color. But I think it has just made me more careful. If I am aware that the person I am talking to is a person of color, I can be aware of the racial power imbalance inherent to our conversation or interaction, and I can try to check my privilege more easily.

It has also made me more aware of where I need to do work on myself. For example, on the subway the other night some black girls were sitting across the aisle from me, talking and laughing very loudly and causing a ruckus. There was a palpable sense of discomfort present among the rest of the [mostly white] passengers. The Fellow became so irritated at the noise that he put on his headphones and wouldn’t talk to me. So I played Tetris on my phone and looked out the window at the nothingness of the subway tunnel and wondered why I, too, felt so uncomfortable. Would I have noticed the girls if they had been white? If their fashion choices had been coded rich instead of coded working class? Maybe, but probably just to the extent that I would have been irritated that they were being loud. Not to the extent that I felt awkward and slightly nervous just because I was sitting two seats away. There was really no reason for me or any other person to have felt uncomfortable because some girls were being silly and having fun. So that is something to work on.

I don’t say this to brag and be like “ZOMG LOOK HOW FAR IVE COME IM NOT RACIST HUR HUR” but it’s just interesting. It does make me more nervous sometimes when I notice a person of color is not white because I desperately don’t want to fuck up and unconsciously lord my whiteness over them. But still, I think it’s better for me on this journey to have to overcome nervousness than to just drift through life, imagining that I live in a fantasy world where we can be colorblind and in which race is not an omnipresent factor.

President Obama lost something invaluable last week when he weighed in on the arrest of his friend, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., saying the Cambridge police acted stupidly. He lost the presumption that he is colorblind and embraces all races and both genders equally.

This colorblindness was, perhaps, the fondest hope of the American public when we elected President Obama to our highest office.  As the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya we hoped his election marked the ascent of a leader possessed of so much empathy, so much intelligence and such a desire to understand all perspectives and experiences that he could resonate with anyone’s needs and disenfranchise no one.

That hope has withered for many, and it will be difficult to resurrect.  The fact that President Obama remained in a church headed by a pastor (Reverend Wright) who denounced white people, together with the fact that the First Lady says she felt no pride in our country until very recently, together with the fact that President Obama nominated a woman to the Supreme Court who slurred white judges as inferior, together with the President’s recent unwarranted slur of a white police sergeant as stupid seems to reveal deep-seated anger in him and constitutes a psychological pattern of insensitivity to the feelings of Caucasians.  He is a President who now (and hopefully only temporarily) seems the least colorblind of my lifetime, a terrible irony and tragedy I certainly didn’t imagine transpiring when he announced his candidacy.

The emotions some white people are sharing with me seem to parallel the feelings that African Americans may have struggled with in the past.  They tell me that they fear President Obama resents them, but won’t say so plainly, that he considers them “less than” others, maybe even demonic (like Reverend Wright does), but won’t admit it.  This gives them, and it gives me, a sliver of insight into how painful it must have been for disenfranchised minorities for decades in this country.  But the price of that slim window on the feelings of others has been high, indeed.  For the millions of white Americans who now better understand what it feels like to doubt that the President of the United States is their President, too, our heightened empathy comes with deep sadness and not a little anxiety.

President Obama doesn’t seem to understand the full depth of what has transpired.  It can’t be glossed over with the words he shared after the Crowley fiasco: 

“This has been ratcheting up, and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up.  I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department and Sgt. Crowley specifically.  And I could’ve calibrated those words differently.”

He then invited Crowley over to the White House for a beer with Professor Gates.

What we needed, as white Americans, for all Americans, was a moment less about political caution and false camaraderie and more about self-revelation.  I kept thinking, as I listened to President Obama, of how short his statement fell from the words of another great African American politician, Jesse Jackson.  During the 1984 Presidential campaign, when Jackson sought the Democratic nomination, he referred to New York City as Hymietown, a slur against Jews.  I remember him taking the podium at the Democratic Convention and apologizing.  It was 25 years ago, and I was just 22-years-old, so forgive me if I have forgotten some of the words.  Most of them are seared into my memory—these two-and-a-half decades later:

“If I have offended anyone, or renewed old fears, I am deeply sorry.  Charge it to my head and not my heart.  I am an imperfect servant.  God is not yet finished with me.”

That was plenty good enough for me.  I didn’t believe Jackson could fake a statement like that.  And I never questioned the man’s heart again. 

President Obama, we need that kind of eloquence and honesty right now.  We need you to do that kind of soul-searching and let us in on the result.

                A common misconception held by the general public is that dogs are color blind and can only see in variations of black and white. This however is not true. Dogs can see in color, but the range of colors they can see is limited when compared to human sight. While the ability to distinguish between a variety of colors is limited, dogs are more sensitive to the colors they can see and distinguish between those shades better than humans.

                 Specifically the colors that dogs are “blind” to or can’t distinguish are the colors of red, orange, yellow and green. Because dogs can’t really interpret these colors it is very hard for them to distinguish between these colors. The colors that dogs can see are blue and violet in the spectrum of light. Since there is a limited ability to see color there could be many possible disadvantages of having a dog’s eye sight. While this is true, their eyesight does excel in other areas like recognizing movement and an increase peripheral vision when compared to humans.

                The common perception of color blindness does not mean that one can not see all color, but rather that someone or something has a limiting ability to distinguish colors. So in reality, yes, dogs are very much colorblind. However they are not color blind to the extent to which we perceive because they are able to see and distinguish in colors of blue and violet.

Twitter No Treat To The Colorblind

I have had it with Twitter profile pages that are designed so they are unreadable to the colorblind. If you have text make it black. If you have sidebars make them light enough so that the black text shows. Anyting else is a no-no.  End of rant. I cannot follow sites designed to be unreadable.

I think you’re colourblind. . . You can’t fly jets if you’re colourblind.