The American Journal of Color Arousal: May 2007

Sunday, 27 May 2007

How do You Respond to Polychromatic Public Displays of Affection

While on a trip to Olinda, in the Recife state of Brazil, I stayed at a little "pousada" (bed and breakfast), where the receptionist, a Black Brazilian woman, invited me out for a drink. In the course of the evening, we drank at a pub (she beer and I Coke with lime) in multi-skin-colored crowd that included people from all over Brazil. When a musical troupe marched down the street serenading the public with violins, guitars, drums and singing, we followed along for almost an hour. Most of the musicians seemed to be of Portuguese descent, but I noticed with pleasure that a Black man was playing the sax.

From there, we proceeded to an ancient pub with five-meter arches over the front doors, wood floors and unfinished brick walls. Again, the bar and each table within the bar had a multicolored crowd. The Black woman who had invited me recognized two white men at a table, hugged them warmly, like old friends, and we sat down to have drinks and conversation. Another Black man joined us.

At some point in a wide-ranging that touched upon architecture, culture and history, I noticed that one of the white men had interlocked his knees with those of the Black woman who had invited me. And then they shared a deep and enduring French kiss that made me think they must be old and intimate friends.

I felt "uncomfortable," which is a word one typically uses when one either doesn't know one's feelings well enough to describe them or doesn't want to own and take responsibility for them. 'Why was this white man kissing a Black woman and why was she kissing him back,' I wanted to know?

I made an effort to seem unconcerned and unphased by their kiss. I didn't mention it and I endeavored to maintain normal eye-contact and not display my feelings.

But, I felt jealous, because I thought that Black women should be reserved for Black men. I felt vaguely angry, suspecting that he might be using or taking advantage of her in some way, although the kiss was plainly consensual and mutually enjoyed. I felt, perhaps, afraid that they would realize I felt these feelings, and I feared that would hurt my friendly interaction with this friendly group.

So, I clearly had color-aroused ideation, about what "should" be: (Blacks intimately with Blacks and whites with whites, and this Black woman with me before she was with a white man). But I feel ambivalent about these thoughts, so I was afraid to "own" them publicly.

As a result of my ideation, I felt mild anger, jealousy, and fear that I would be discovered having these feelings.

So, what was my behavior? I "pretended" not to feel what I did, I "acted" like I was "color-blind" when, in fact, quite aware of my own color-aroused feelings and thoughts.

I was able to quickly "let go" of these thoughts and feelings, without obsessing about them or acting upon them. I'd say that my I manifested my thoughts and feelings in "mild" behavior (pretending not to be color-aroused, dissembling). I would say that my behavior was not moderate (e.g. arguing with the kissers or getting up and leaving, which might have left us estranged and terminated the social interaction negatively, for the present and the future). I certain that my behavior in the situation was not "extreme" (e.g. overturning a table to punch someone in the face, which might have resulted in arrest, conviction, civil fines, etc.).

Most importantly to me, I refrained from any imappropriate outward and overt behavior. I believe that if everyone who experienced color-arousal were able and willing able to exercise sufficient self-control to avoid "mild" and "extreme" color-aroused behavior, then the world would be a safer and more productive place for everyone, Black and white and otherwise.

Is "Race" a "Pigment of the Imagination?"

First posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog.

There are some observations about the natural world that really serve to put things in perspective, because they are based upon facts and logic and employ unquestionably good reasoning skills, even if they sometimes seem cold and callous.

When you say, "race is a pigment of the imagination," it sounds as if you may be doubting the validity of the word "pigment" as well as the fallacious term "race." Now, I know you're not doubting the existence of pigments, because many of nature's processes in all of the animal and flora species depend upon and would not have evolved were it not for pigments.

And so I want to make a clear distinction that I am negating what does not exist, but I am not claiming to be color-blind, which would be adopting a new and easily disproved unscientific fallacy in an effort to discredit a different one ("race").

Defending the Abolition of the Words "Race" and "Racism" in the Revolutionary Fight Against Color-Aroused Disorder: A Response to Field Negro

If a person tells me that they are color-blind, then I will ask them who matches the colors in their clothes for them, since their combinations of colors show a clear awareness of color and shade and hue. I will ask them why they paid more to order a car in the color of their choice. I will ask them why they used a contrasting color on the trim of their house, when labor and paint costs would have been less had they painted the house all one undifferentiated color.

And then they will have to acknowledge that they are not speaking literally when they say that they are "color-blind," but are, in effect, lying for a rhetorical and political purpose.

When you say that you are color-blind only for the purposes of skin-color, you create a new fiction about the natural world that is as absurd as the fiction of "race" itself.

So many lies have been told about skin color that I don't think more lies is the map to the road forward. Science has done quite a lot to undercut theories of "race" and I'm quite content to rely on avid observation of science as a tool in further progress, rather than doing what the white supremacists did: make up lies and fictions about science for a political purpose.

Friday, 25 May 2007

AMJCA Mission Statement

The American Journal of Color Arousal (AMJCA) is a critical thinking journal whose articles explore what happens in the human mind, and then in human society when skin-color-aroused emotions and ideation are manifested in skin-color-aroused behavior. Articles in the American Journal of Color Arousal (AMJCA) are never based on anachronistic and disproved science, but are based instead upon critical psychiatric and sociological observation and study of humans and human interaction in our sociological environment.

Methodologically, the American Journal of Color Arousal (AMJCA) studies the group of phenomena that were once referred to as "racism" but are now referred to as Extreme Color-Aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder (ECEIBD), which often is called Extreme Color Arousal for short. The American Journal of Color Arousal (AMJCA) rejects the fatalistic and unproven assumption that color-aroused emotions, ideation and behavior are beyond the control of humans and instead seeking analogies to other behavioral disorders which are successfully treated with well-known psychiatric and behavioral therapies.

At the American Journal of Color Arousal (AMJCA), which functions as a blog with community participation, you will find a constantly updated link list called, "Concepts in Color Arousal Theory," including many articles discussing how to reconstruct our mental maps of the relationships between and within color groups while steadfastly rejecting and abandoning any and every reliance on the cow-apple theory.

To understand individual ideation, AMJCA articles deconstruct the fallacious pseudo-biological, ideological and political concept of "race" and offers new empirically-based concepts to replace the anachronistic and faulty ones. The American Journal of Color Arousal (AMJCA) acknowledges and retains the concept of "racism" while abandoning the "R" word, which is a vestige of a white supremacy ideology.

The articles and links posted AMJCA are written by Francis L. Holland, Esq, other Afrosphere bloggers, whitosphere bloggers, published psychiatrists, the American Psychiatric Association, other attorneys, sociologists, anthropologists and other professionals and critical observers of the natural world.

Please feel free to contribute, but always be prepared to define and defend all of your terms, assertions and arguments empirically, because we test reality against facts, not ideology.

Francis L. Holland, Esq.

Editor, The American Journal of Color Arousal

Bronze Trinity and the Driving Directions: Micro-Insults and Color-Aroused Segregation Vigilance

Bronze Trinity vs. the White Segregation Militia

In comments at the Racial Realist blog to a post entitled, Top Ten Dishonest Comments about Race, Bronze Trinity recounts the following color-aroused anecdote:

A while back I told a white co-worker I went for a drive by myself in a real nice (all white) neighborhood. Now, I drive a fairly new SUV without “bling”, but yet a white male called out to me and proceeded to show me the MAIN road out, with a smile (as if I was lost). I got offended by that, because it was like saying I didn’t belong for what ever reason. If I was white he might have thought I was visiting someone else who was also white in the area.

I didn’t even have to mention anything about race. However, because of the said area and simple mathematics, my white co-worker performed her “defending” duty and didn’t see it that way. She said he was just being “helpful” (as if she even knew him personally).

I thank Bronze Trinity for sharing this experience, because most of us feel angry or at least annoyed when we suffer these color-aroused insults. Dr. Alvin F Poussaint, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School asserts that "racism" is a mental illness. If so, what are the specific emotions, ideation and behavior that constitute that illness and to what level of severity do those emotions, ideation and behavior have to rise in order to be considered "racist"? Is Extreme Racism a Mental Illness? Yes.

I would like to focus first on the matter of the white man in the car who offered Bronze Trinity (BT) the unsolicited driving directions. Only later will I discuss the white woman co-worker.

I propose that investigators must look at the specific emotions, ideation and behavior involved, and the severity of each of these, as well as the duration, to determine whether a particular individual has the illness of "racism," (which I call Extreme Color-Aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder (ECEIBD), abbreviated as Extreme Color Arousal (ECA) ). Each of us experiences color-aroused acts at the time the occur, and we respond emotionally based on the effects that the acts have on us.

But, to be clear in our thinking and avoid referring others to psychiatrists unnecessarily, we must distinguish between individual and discreet behaviors that are sometimes symptoms of Extreme Color Arousal and, on the other hand, the overall syndrome of ECEIBD, because one snowflake does not necessarily mean a snowstorm. The problem with using one word like "racism" to describe all behaviors, from the least significant to the most severe, is that we simultaneously exaggerate all that is "mild" and normalize all that is "extreme".

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association "employs the basic strategy that, given the absence of knowledge about the underlying nature of psychiatric disorders, clinicians should convey the maximum amount of descriptive information possible. . . The strategy is to encourage the clinician to record the maximum amount of diagnostic information, as a way of characterizing the complexity of clinical presentations."PubMedCentral

So, I find Bronze Trinity's experience very useful because it offers very detailed and specific observations about the behavior and apparent ideation of a white man who shows color-arousal that allows to to characterize and measure relative quality and severity of the symptoms. Alvin F. Pouissant, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says that the condition that has been referred to as "racism" is an illness.

In this case, in a virtually all-white neighborhood, when a white man saw BT and perceived BT's skin-color, the white man's perception of BT's skin-color, combined with his pre-established beliefs about Blacks' color-determined "place" in societyaroused preconceived ideation in the the white man that (a) BT couldn't belong there in the mostly white neighborhood, and therefore (b) BT shouldn't belong there. That Ideation became manifest in the Behavior of trying to show BT how to immediately leave the white neighborhood, which has the effect of enforcing segregation.

We can only infer from his behavior and the circumstances the color-aroused man's emotions, since we cannot see them; we look to his behavior or deduce his emotions from his speech, unless he expresses them directly.

In 98.5% of cases considered to be “hate crimes”, it is the offenders own “negative comments hurtful words and abusive language” at the time of commission of the crime that enables us to make the link between color-aroused emotion, ideation and action. ECEIBD: New Pathways to Diagnosis and Treatment

For example, in hate crimes, the Color-Aroused Perpetrator often issues overt threats like "I'll kill you," threats from which e.g. "anger" can be more easily inferred. In this case, although the white man did not threaten to kill BT, he did seem to be "jealously" enforcing a de-facto whites-only rule, and offers insight into the co-workers emotions.

If the white man was aroused by BT's color to behave in a way that BT found offensive, does that necessarily mean that the white man had Color-Arousal Disorder? Traditionally, psychiatry looks at the emotions, ideation and behavior from the perspective of the patient and asks whether the symptoms are problematic for the patient. Although this may seem fundamentally unfair and disadvantageous to Blacks, there still may be some logic to this clinically. Patients seek help with symptoms that bother them or that greatly disturb others with whom the patient has a relationship that the patient wants to maintain. The psychiatric therapeutic relationship is based on self-interest.

This presents a problem that is evident in the thinking of the American Psychiatric Association, whose Position Statement of "racism" describes the problem mostly in terms of its negative effects on others while little exploring the psychic trauma and dislocation of the Color-Aroused Person that might motivate him to enter treatment and endeavor to change his ideation, emotions and behavior.

And since fundamentally psychiatry and all medical sciences are first and foremost about helping the patient, those who wish to demonstrate to the APA that racism is a disease will need to focus much more on how this disease affects the patient. Position Statement of the American Psychiatric Association

It is often assumed that color-aroused people experience feelings of pleasure at the moment of abusing others, and this may be true. But, like the abusive husband who is actually tormented by low self-esteem and morbid fear that his mate may become unfaithful, some whites may actually experience considerable internal turmoil as a result of their ideation and emotion, and also when their behavior leads to consequences that are negative for them. This negative side of the abuser experience may offer an opportunity for abusers to experience the need for help with their feelings, acting-out behavior, and subsequent unmanageability.

In assessing a situation like this, it is easy to fall into the conceptual trap of believing that the harm is done only to the victim. Although we might assume that the white person feels nothing or his feelings are limited to reveling in victory, some whites seem to experience pervasive anxiety and fears about "encroachment" of Black people upon "their" territory? Even when their intention is to take the territory of others, they may experience apprehension and insecurity about their ability to obtain and keep that territory.

When whites endeavor to enforce segregation, do they feel constant anxiety, as though they are beset from all sides? If so, does this anxiety ever rise to the level of pervasive paranoia? Do they fear that integration will lead to their children having increase interaction with Blacks and, if so, does this lead to anxiety and, perhaps, intra-familial conflict?

Abusive partners are often described as having as excessive need to control, but this, although accurate, is only part of their story. The important omission is why they have this need. Their early childhood developmental needs have not been met. They have not learned how to care for themselves or their families in an adult way, and attempt to avoid facing their feelings of inadequacy or having others discover their secret.

When frustrated, they react with rage. Because of their feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, they expect their partners to parent, nurture and protect them, and react abusively when their partners do not. Abusive partners usually do not realize that they experience these frustrations or that they vent their feelings of inadequacy and helplessness through violence toward others. SabbathofDomesticPeace.Org

Even if the Color-Aroused Perpetrator habitually hurts himself and others severely, the American Psychiatric Association is not convinced that such behaviors is symptomatic of a mental disease process. Dr. Alvin Pouissant says,

The American Psychiatric Association has never officially recognized extreme racism (as opposed to ordinary prejudice) as a mental health problem, although the issue was raised more than 30 years ago. After several racist killings in the civil rights era, a group of black psychiatrists sought to have extreme bigotry classified as a mental disorder. The association's officials rejected the recommendation, arguing that because so many Americans are racist, even extreme racism in this country is normative—a cultural problem rather than an indication of psychopathology.

The psychiatric profession's primary index for diagnosing psychiatric symptoms, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), does not include racism, prejudice, or bigotry in its text or index.1 Therefore, there is currently no support for including extreme racism under any diagnostic category. This leads psychiatrists to think that it cannot and should not be treated in their patients.

To continue perceiving extreme racism as normative and not pathologic is to lend it legitimacy. Alvin Pouissant, Is Extreme Racism a Mental Illness? Yes

From Dr. Pouissant's discussion above, if color-aroused behaviors are placed on a continuum from the most benign to the most harmfully "extreme," it seems unlikely that the behavior of Bronze Trinity's co-worker would find itself on the extreme end of the spectrum. In fact, even characterizing such a relatively minor individual act as "racism illness" per se, without more information, might have the unintended effect of discrediting the "racism" diagnosis entirely.

It would be more appropriate to first observe that the behavior may well have been evidence of arousal to skin-color, and then secondly endeavor to place this evidence of arousal to skin-color - the emotion, ideation and behavior manifested here - on a continuum from the "benign" to the "mild" to the "moderate" and "severe." Although this might seems like a lot of meticulous effort, it is just such effort that distinguishes science from mere story-telling.

How do we determine whether emotion, ideation and/or behavior are "mild," "moderate" or "severe"? In the definition of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the DSM-IV uses symptom qualifiers like "that cause marked anxiety or distress" and "rules that must be applied rigidly" and "compulsions cause marked distress" and "significantly interfere with the person’s normal routine." DMS reprinted at BiologicalUnhappiness.Com In that case it's clear that although the patient might have symptoms generally characteristic of the disorder, the symptoms must also rise to a certain severity before the person can be diagnosed as suffering from the disorder.

Constant vigilance in the enforcement of segregation, I believe, is an obsessive and compulsive behavior such as we see in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
The DSM-IV says of OCD that, "the behaviors or mental acts are aimed at preventing or reducing distress or preventing some dreaded event or situation; however, these behaviors or mental acts either are not connected in a realistic way with what they are designed to neutralize or prevent or are clearly excessive." Perpetually reminding Blacks to stay out of white neighborhoods might also be a behavior of the type targetted by the OCD diagnosis. DSM-IV Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Criteria.

In the case of "racism, "unfortunately many people are content to diagnose another person as "racist" without considering the spectrum of symptoms that should be present for this diagnosis and without considering the required severity of those symptoms for the diagnosis to be found. Clearly, without the adjectival qualifiers present in the OCD diagnosis, literally anyone might be diagnosed as having OCD, and it is not practical to treat everyone even it were desirable. Medical resources have to be focused on the people who actually need help.

Had the man sworn at BT or shown anger, then that certainly would have been "severe" level behavior consistent with a Extreme Color Arousal (ECA), because it would have been unprovoked by the particular victim and could have led to a fight in which the woman or BT could have been injured or killed. An angry outburst or over insult by the white man could have led to a dangerous "road-raging" incident, and therefor such a behavior would have to be considered "severe."

It is also important to point out that, although a person's symptoms might not rise to the level of an "illness" requiring psychiatric treatment, the symptoms can still be problematic and troublesome for the patient and for others. Troublesome symptoms that may not yet constitute a psychiatric disorder should be addressed so that they do not progress to the level where they do constitute a disorder.

When symptoms do constitute a disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder can be treated, depending upon the severity, with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), exposure therapy, group therapy and anxiolytics (nerve calming medications), but only if the patient is sufficiently motivated to seek and engage in treatment. PsychGuidelines OCDINFO PSYCH.ORG

Offering directions to BT as if she were lost may have been a "micro-insult." Black psychiatrist Carl C. Bell, M.D, President & CEO of Chicago's Community Mental Health Council, Founder of The Institute for the Prevention of Violence and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health at the University of Illinois, says:

Yet another challenge is knowing when, where, and how to resist oppression (e.g., microaggressions or microinsults and overt discrimination) versus when, where, and how to accommodate it. [" "Microagressions" is the term used to refer to the slights, racialized comments and insults, and non-verbal "put-downs" that racially stigmatized persons endure on a daily basis."] Why Some Black Children are Still Choosing White Dolls Over Black Dolls

BT clearly believes that this behavior had a purpose beyond spontaneous aggression, to wit, "social control:" enforcing segregation. If so, in this particular instance the white man's behavior arguably was an instrumental enforcement that was of a "mild" or "moderate," but not "severe," quality, because the behavior was relatively subtle - not overtly insulting or physically aggressive - and the behavior was not illegal or violent, (which are red flags of "severe" color-aroused behavior, if only because of the potential consequences, physical and legal, to the perpetrator).

It is not impossible to imagine circumstances under which the white co-worker might seek help to deal with her emotions, ideation and behavior, if they became sufficiently severe. For example, if she suddenly had a Black neighbor and became overwhelmed with these feelings, she might decide that reevaluating her thoughts and feelings was cheaper or less troublesome that selling her house and moving away.

If she suddenly had a Black supervisor and was compelled to choose between revising her interaction modalities with the supervisor or losing her job, she might decide to seek therapy to better understand and cope with this new challenge.

A corporation or organization seeking to reduce antagonisms by its workers might insist that particularly problematic workers be evaluated for what I call Extreme Color-Aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder (ECEIBD), also know as Extreme Color Arousal (ECA).

White people seek therapy for a lot of reasons that would have been unheard of only a few generations ago. With sufficient motivation in an increasingly multi-cultural world, and if such therapy were available, it is conceivable that some but certainly not all whites would seek help. In fact, in preparation for the next publication of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), members of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) are studying whether "pathological bias" is a mental disorder which should be diagnosed and treated by members of the APA. With the advocacy of Dr. Bell and others, the APA has developed a Position Paper on the matter that calls for additional research.

Thursday, 24 May 2007

Color Arousal and the "Kindling" of Dramatic Acts of Violence

Field Negro said,

“There has to be some form of serious pathological arousal or trigger taking place in that individual. So yes, lynching was acting out a form of ECA by those who committed those atrocious and shocking acts.” Field Negro in The AfroSpear

TRIGGERS IN CLASSIC PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORY

In classic Freudian psychiatry, therapists sought the single “trigger” - the one time potent psychic event - that forever caused psychic disturbances in patients, such as inadvertently seeing parents violently love-making. (My example.) More recently, psychiatry and psychology have come to realize that a series of events over a long period of time can serve as kindling for a fire that can burn brightly or dimly depending upon stress and circumstances.

WHITE SUPREMACIST IDEOLOGY IN THE PROLONGED "KINDLING" MODEL, IN THE CONTEXT OF UNEQUAL POWER BETWEEN COLOR GROUPS

So, rather than there being any immediate trigger that outrages the lyncher, there may have been a ongoing ideational and emotional preparation, reinforced by behavior over time, that prepares the Extreme Color-Aroused Offender for an act of lynching.

For example, during slavery, the whipping of slaves and other brutal acts, and slavery itself, would have been traumatic to very young white children. But because it was so common, they would have quickly adjusted to their surrounding, adopting the dominant ideology and ideation that such acts of brutality were normal and natural. There emotions would have adjusted to their ideological expectation, even to the extent of showing little emotion upon, or reveling in the lynching, of a Black man.

The belief that it was necessary to “keeps the ‘N’s’ in their place,” in spite of the obvious reasons that Blacks would have had for resisting, would have would have caused a constant fear in whites as well as a perpetual need to engage in acts that kept Blacks subservient. So, rather than needing a dramatic “trigger” to arouse an act such as a lynching, whites may well have been looking for a trigger that would serve to would serve to rationalize and serve as a pretext for a dramatic act of brutal “lesson teaching” that would assert and reassert control over Blacks. In such an atmosphere any event or non event at all might suffice as the pretext for a white community moment of reassertion of control. And therefore, no dramatic “trigger” in the normal sense would have been necessary.

Emerge Magazine explains that the mere allegation that 14-year-old Emmett Till had whistled at a white woman in Greenwood, Mississippi, was enough to get the youth “abducted, beaten, shot in the head and tossed into the Tallahatchie River near Greenwood, Miss., “mutilated” for allegedly whistling at a White woman.” Clearly, little motivation was needed to set fire to the dry kindling that was the segregated south.

THE IDEATION OF WHITES DURING SLAVERY

As Emerge explains, ideationally whites idolized white women and and desperately feared the normal interpersonal contact that might be expected to occur between people of opposite sexes living and interacting with each other constantly. Although white men regularly engaged in sex with Black women who were in no position to refuse, they nonetheless were extremely afraid and therefore extremely jealous of any possible liasons between white women and Black men. Indeed, white ideation and ideology had it that their right to enslave Blacks derived from their "superior white genes."

THE EMOTIONS OF WHITES DURING SLAVERY

Sex between Black men and white women offered no benefit for white men and, moreover threatened the very ideological underpinnings of white subjugation of and exploitation of free black labor (slavery) and cheap Black labor (share cropping).
The very system they created also created extreme anger, jealousy, fear, pervasive suspicion, hyper-vigilance and prolonged dread of inevitable change or conflict in whites.

THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF "KINDLING"

BESSEL A. VAN DER KOLK and JOSE SAPORTA of Harvard Medical School explain (in very scientific language) how living in such an environment of constant tension and sudden outbursts of catastrophic violence could subtly but measurably change human minds at a neuronal level:

“A third trauma related function of the limbic system involves the issue of kindling. Intermittent stimulation of the limbic system with an electrical current that was initially too small to produce overt behavioral effects can eventually sensitize limbic neuronal circuits and lower neuronal firing thresholds: repeated stimulation of the amygdala causes long-term alterations in neuronal excitability (for a review, see van der Kolk, 1987). It is possible that similar kindling phenomena occur when people are repeatedly traumatized, or when one traumatic event is followed by intrusive reexperiences.

Thus, trauma may lead to lasting neurobiological and behavioral (characterological) changes mediated by alterations in the temporal lobe. Kindling may also account for the frequent finding of soft neurological signs in trauma victims, especially in child victims of physical or sexual abuse (van der Kolk, 1987). Open studies claim that carbamezapine is an effective treatment for the intrusive symptoms of PTSD (Lipper et al., 1986) which lends some support for a role of the limbic system in codifying post traumatic reactions. BESSEL A. VAN DER KOLK and JOSE SAPORTA

“Debilitating poverty and complicated family relationships that result in little parenting, alienation, and anger serve as kindling for a fire that bums within, waiting for the crucial spark. Such fundamental breakdowns of society that contribute to violence permeate schools and must be dealt with daily by educational personnel. As violence has escalated in the larger society, it has spilled over into the schools as well.” USA Today

SUMMARY

So, in the context of the Jim Crow South, where Extreme Color-Aroused Violent Behavior was a tool that perpetuated the social control of segregationists, it would not have required a dramatic “trigger” in the normal sense for a kindled situation primed for violence to explode in episodes of outrageous color-antagonistic brutality.

The New Nomenclature of Color Arousal

First posted at TheFreeSlave in response to an article entitled, Moving From the Heart to the Head on the Race Issue (Cecilia and TheFreeSlave, May 23, 2007).

I realize now that I have not referred to myself or others using the “R” word for a long time. And now, I will no longer use words based on and containing the root of the “R” word, like “racism” and “racist” and “racial.” All of these words that have become staples of our communication are based on a white supremacist biological concept - “R” - that has no basis in scientific reality.

Of course we need words to describe and denote the very real concepts that were represented by the words “R” and “racism” and “racial” and “racist.” The “R” word is the easiest to replace - with the phrase “the Black people.” It will humanize us to finally refer to ourselves as “people” rather than as anything else.

The “racism” word can be replaced with “Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder” (ECA), which is the short way to referring to the psychiatric illness of Extreme Color-Aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder (ECEIBD). As Cecelia correctly reminds us, we need a greater focus on our feelings and on white people’s underlying feelings. This definition, although longer than the term “racism” has the benefit of explicitly encouraging us to look at, describe and communicate about ALL of the emotions that underly “racism,” instead of just the anger that the “racism” word regularly evokes.

The word “racial” can be replaced more accurately with the phrase, “color-groups,” and even more accurately with the phrase “perceived color-groups,” since the only thing that really groups beige people from New Guinea with Black people from Chicago is the color-antagonistic mind’s refusal to differentiate between people, other than to say, “They’re all Black! You can’t tell them apart!”

The word “racist” can be replaced with the phrase “Extremely color-aroused disordered person,” or “ECA disordered person,” (which is quite a bit more insulting, if you think about it). Or “person with ECEIBD. Or “patient with ECEIBD.” Those phrases and terms will serve as a deterrent to public behavior symptomatic of ECA.

It should be noted that we refer to “hate crimes” in legal statutes, rather than “race” crimes or “racist crimes.” Did the failure to use the word “R” word in those statutes rob us of our sense of self? Of course not! It merely clarified the nature of the crime and thereby increased the likelihood that perpetrators would be convicted.

Speaking of which, we need a name for people who commit crimes when aroused by skin-color, and those crimes can be based on envy and even love, as well as hate. For them, we have the term "Extreme Color-Aroused Perpetrator!" One advantage of this willingness to engage in new thought is that it yields a host of catchy and newsworthy new names to call the people who target us for color-aroused abuse. Like “color-aroused abuser.”
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plez...
May 24th, 2007 at 04:24 p

i am a proponent of removing the word “race” from our vocabulary, but we must work to remove the word “race” from our consciousness, as well. as long as the concept remains, there will be the opportunity for another word to replace it.

Concepts in Color Arousal: Online Reference Links

The American Journal of Color Arousal