LA Times Article Points to Physiological Reactions to Color-Aroused Emotions, Ideation and Behavior

The Backyard Beacon blog quotes an LA Times article that says, " 'We have always thought of race-based discrimination as producing a kind of attitude,” says Vickie Mays, psychologist and director of the UCLA Center on Research, Education, Training and Strategic Communication on Minority Health Disparities. ' Now we think we have sufficient information to say that it’s more than just affecting your attitude. A person experiences it, has a response, and the response brings about a physiological reaction."

This response is part of what I'll call (today) "color-associated ideation, emotion and behavior response." Regardless of skin color, in a color-activated society we learn to have color-activated ideation, emotion and behavior that affects us in many ways. However, the ways they affect us, as well as our color-activated emotion, ideation and behavior vary according to a number of factors, principle among which is our skin color and our skin-color determined sociological position in society.

I propose that whether Black or white, we all may need to be screened and, in some cases, diagnosed and treated for ideation, emotion and behavior conditions that result from denigration, subjugation and exploitation on the basis of skin color, whether as members of the exploiting class or the exploited class. And I propose that the denigration, subjugation and exploitation that whites engage in is the manifestation of a disease learned through experience in our society while many Blacks experience ideation, emotion and behavior, as well as physiological reactions that are also manifestations of a disease learned through experience in our society.

Although many aspects vary according to our role in society, what we share with whites is that we may experience, to varying degrees, an illness learned through color-associated experience in our society.

As with any illness white and Black resist the idea that we may be ill at all, because such an acknowledgment would be extremely upsetting, requiring immense reconfiguration of our lives, just as the acknowledgment of pedophilia, diabetes, alcoholism or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder causes immense upset and reconfiguration of our lives, with lifelong consequences.