Deryl Dedmond Case Spotlights Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder

The case of Deryl Dedmond, a white teenager who seems to have suffered from Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder (ECAD) that led him to murder a Black stranger, seems to be getting massive attention in the United States, as it should.  Apparently, Deryl Dedmond led a group of white teenagers to get in their cars and trucks, drive from their all-white suburb to Jackson, Misssissippi, pick a Black man at random, beat him to within an inch of his life, and then run the Black man over with a pick-up truck. "According to CNN, the teens were specifically hunting for a black victim."

Curiously, police have decided to charge only two of several white youths in this case, including murder for Dedmond and assault for his companion.  Compare this to the Jena Six case, where no one was seriously hurt and yet three Black men were charged with acts including attempted murder.  This case will be an object lesson about the criminal (in)justice system, regarding the way that Blacks and whites are investigated charged and sentenced in similar cases, based on their skin color.

It also seems obvious to me (see the above video) that Deryl Dedmond was led to the act he committed by a serious mental illness called "Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder" (ECAD) because:

• Witnesses say that Dedmond showed aggressive and antagonistic behavior toward Blacks over a period of years.
• Dedmond came to the attention of people in his community as a result of his color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior;
• Witnesses believed it was only a matter of time before Dedmond committed a serious color aroused crime, which is a hallmark of Extreme Color Aroused Disorder.  Anyone who will kill a stranger based on his skin color has a serious mental illness called Extreme Color Aroused Disorder.  Color Aroused Disorder is "extreme" when the color arousal leads one person to murder another, because murder itself is extreme and often leads to long jail sentences that separate the mentally ill person from his family, friends and educational or professional career.  An illness that seriously harms a person in that many important areas of his life is "extreme" per se.

Now that we have seen what Deryl could do based on his awareness, ideation, emotion and behavior concerning his own skin color and that of another skin-color group, let's see how the criminal justice system and the media treat this case.

Hopefully, Deryl Dedmond is already getting some psychiatric attention that might eventually lead from an extreme condition that causes him to commit murder and lessen the illness until he can at least not kill based on his ideation and emotion.   He may need medication that enables him to control strong emotions more successfully and also to help him reduce his rage to the point where he can engage meaningfully in therapy that addresses is apparent Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder (ECAD).

White Youths Kill Black Stranger in Color-Aroused Crime

How can you tell whether an alleged act or acts reflect and are symptomatic of Extreme Color-Aroused Ideation, Emotion and Behavior Disorder?  In criminal cases, among other evidence, people's statements (verbally expressed ideation) may reflect their hate, fear, envy, jealousy, or even curiosity, love, lust, empathy and caring, based on skin color.

For example,

CNN is reporting the alleged hate crime [against] James Craig Anderson, a 49-year-old auto plant worker, who was beaten and then murdered [run over by a truck driven] by a group of white teens intent on hurting a black person. Deryl Dedmon, Jr., 18, of Brandon, Mississippi and his friends were at a party drinking when Dedmon allegedly told friends they should leave, saying "let's go fuck with some niggers," according to law enforcement officials.

When ideation and emotion are based on skin color, and skin color is the cue for a person to commit a criminal act, then you have a color-aroused behavior that, in many cases, may bring civil and criminal penalties.  It is important to note that it is the illicit behavior that may bring civil and criminal punishments, while these punishments would NOT result from "mere" extreme color-aroused ideation and emotion, without the illicit behavior.  The illicit behavior is a key symptom sometimes present in Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder.

Is all color-aroused violence a "hate crime"?  As a legal matter it might be, but as a matter of psychology, not necessarily.   If the white-skinned Dedmon killed the victim because the white anti-black antagonist was jealous of Black people and their Black President, then the crime might factually be a crime of envy, hate, jealousy and vengeance.  If you if you imagine Dedmon in his first meeting with the prison psychologist, his resentments against Black people may be based on a number of emotions, since virtually no one feels only hate, consciously and unconsciously.  Everybody has a panoply of feelings.  A white man might hate a Black US Senate candidate because he fears the Black candidate will be elected.

I am painfully aware that a lot of Black people and white people believe that any attempt to undertand psychologically why a culprit did what he did risks that the culprit may be perceived as not as culpable for what he did, and therefore might receive a lesser sentence, if he receives a sentence at all.

In this case, where there is video cam evidence and where Dedmon admitted his crime after the fact, Dedmon could receive a strong prison sentence, unless his case is tried before an all-white jury.  Perhaps the case may be tried before an all-white jury, and then Dedmon might go free, in spite of his crime that was based on anti-Black antagonistic ideation, emotion and criminal behavior.

When a person assaults and kills a stranger based on the skin color of the victim and the skin color of the accused, then that is a strong indicator that the culprit has Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder, since no one without the disorder would risk imprisonment for the purpose of targeting a stranger based on skin color.  Only a person with Extreme Color Aroused Disorder would do that.  Disorder is "extreme" when, among other facts:

• The behavior violated laws such that it could bring or be likely to lead to criminal charges or civil liability against the assailant(s);
• The assailants did not know the victim and were looking to harm someone, anyone, based on his brown skin color;
• The assailant risks that the man they attack might be armed or have friends nearby, and so attacking the victim could very well lead to physical harm for the assailants;
• The assailants did not stand to gain or save any money through this behavior, but could only lose money so the assailants' behavior was not self-interested but was likely to be self-destructive;
• The assailants run the risk of spending time in jail or even being executed for their crime;
• The assailants lose social, political and potential professional opportunities as a result of the behavior.

The above focuses on the irrational and self-destructive nature of the behavior, which is indicative of Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder (ECAD).  Of course, behavior can be self-interested (i.e. stealing from someone based on their skin color) and still be symptomatic of Extreme Color Aroused Disorder.
 
When the accused Mr. Dedmon has gets to prison and speaks with the prison psychologist for the first time, Dedmon might well reveal that he was envious of Black people, many of whom have successful jobs, nice cars and a happy future ahead of them. 

Is it wrong to acknowledge that a crime might have been motivated by color-aroused envy or color-aroused jealousy and/or color-aroused fear, as well as color-aroused hatred?

If a Black man kills a white man because he fears that the white man will take his wife, based on his knowledge that his wife has a thing for white men, then the killing of a white man by a Black man could be aroused by jealousy, envy and fear that leads to antagonistic behavior.  If this seems complex, it is.  Human beings are believed to have powers of feeling, thought and behavior that others in the animal kingdom do not have.  If you accept that proposition, then you must also accept that human minds are copiously full of all sorts ideation and emotion that sometimes lead to behavior.

If you hear anyone trying to describe all of this with one word, e.g. "racism" or "hate," then you know that person simply has not taken the time and effort to understand the mechanics of color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior, and they may even be averse to complex thought about inherently complex people.

Don't Confuse Race with Race

I just read about a disappointing book in which a Black woman author says that "race" doesn't exist but "race" does and so we have to teach everyone the difference between "race" and "race".  That's like teaching people the difference between "orange" and "orange."  Do you mean the same thing when you say orange (fruit) that I mean when I say orange (color)?  Unless we discuss it for about twenty years, we won't even be able to tell the difference. 

Meanwhile, other malevolent people will take advantage of the confusion for all sorts of evil purposes.

• I don't like that orange!  Do you? 
• Oh, no, I hate that orange.
• Do you like the oranges?
  
• Oh, no!   I can't stand any of them.
• Would you like an orange?
• Oh, yes, I need the vitamin "C".

If anything ever needed to be disambiguated, it's the vocabulary that use when we say "race" and when, on the other hand, we say "race."  The author said it's simple to tell the difference, but if it's so simple then why did she have to write a book about it and why should anyone buy her book about something that is obvious?

Will Obama's race hurt his race?  No, I don't think the race will matter much, unless the race doesn't turn out to vote.  Now, I'm realizing that this race is for real!  No, a race doesn't matter at all.  It the conduct of the race that matters in the race between the races, and I think Obama has race locked up as much as he has funding for the race.  Is Obama fund-raising for his race instead of fundraising for all of the Democratic Party races?  Although race is a scientific fallacy, race is for real and its significance cannot be underestimated.

Are you confused now?  Don't feel bad because everyone is.

Francis

African American Book Review: Sylvia Harris' Autobiography of Bipolar Disorser and Salvation Through Love of Horse Racing

The new book, "Long Shot: My Bipolar Life and the Horses Who Saved Me," is a must-read for those African Americans like me who struggle with bipolar illness, as well as for professionals caregivers and family members who want to understand Bipolar patients and have a sincere desire to help. As someone who has seen this process from the inside, I can and do vouch for the anguish it causes in the patient, family and career.

The author, Sylvia Harris, describes exactly what it was like to be somewhat manic, floridly manic, psychotically manic and depressed. She recalls a time when she cycled through these stages with no idea of what has happening to her, clueless as to the exit from the perpetual emotional roller coaster.

Through her painfully honest autobiography, she gives readers an inside view of her manic-depressive problem and how she overcame its worst aspects by striving for meaning and healthy excitement. Desiring to become a horse trainer and eventually a jockey, she demonstrates that we need not achieve all that we want in order to benefit from the pursuit of our dreams.

Without specifically saying so, she demonstrates the similarities between Bipolar illness, alcoholism and drug addiction, in which many sufferers, their families, circle of friends and employers must often acknowledge the illness and their personal powerlessness over it, before they can find relief and redemption.

Harris courageously describes learning to realize when an attack of mania was beginning and what--for her--triggered those attacks.

Not all readers (including myself) will identify with Harris' love for horses and the essential role they came to have in Harris' rehabilitation. But, everyone perceives that having a personally meaningful goal toward which we strive helps us to find meaning in life when our lives would otherwise seem to us to be meaningless.

Essentially, Bipolars often have a necessity for a goal and aspiration larger than life, lest we be overcome by depression and the conviction that our lives are meaningless.

As in any worthwhile autobiography, Sylvia Harris brings the reader along on the trail to overcoming the worst her difficulties, while acknowledging that some "wreckage of the past" is inevitable but not utterly insoluble.

I personally do not read prefaces or introductions to autobiographies, because of their tendency to remove the mystery and discovery process from the narrative itself. Sylvia Harris's "Long Shot: My Bipolar Life and the Horses Who Saved Me" ends realistically, in a manner with which we may all be able to identify.

If you enjoy the thrill of discovering what happens at the end of Sylvia Harris' autobiography, then don't read the introduction and preface at the beginning.

Read the whole autobiography and learn what happens just as Sylvia Harris did: one day and one experience at a time.

You can't be of help to a Bipolar person or patient unless you understand their world from their perspective, as well as from your own (probably) vastly different perspective on the patient and the illness. This is maddeningly frustrating, but true nonetheless.

This book provides a heartfelt, and searingly honest account of life for those like me who struggle with bipolar illness, as well as for professionals, caregivers and family members who want to understand
Bipolar patients and who have a sincere desire to help.

"Race" and Blood Types, Superstition and Science

Would you rather have a blood transfusion from someone who shares your skin color or from someone who shares your blood type?  It is my belief that transfusing blood from one person to another based on skin color would be an extraordinarily dangerous practice.  The American Red Cross, which maintains blood banks, says:

Although all blood is made of the same basic elements, not all blood is alike. In fact, there are eight different common blood types, which are determined by the presence or absence of certain antigens – substances that can trigger an immune response if they are foreign to the body. Since some antigens can trigger a patient's immune system to attack the transfused blood, safe blood transfusions depend on careful blood typing and cross-matching.

The blood table below, broken out by "race," shows that blood types do not obey superstitious sociological and cultural notions of "race".  The following chart from the American Red Cross shows that if all Caucasians received O+ blood transfusions on the logic that O+ is most common among Caucasians, then sixty-three percent of white people would receive the WRONG blood type during transfusions.

Most white people would have a higher chance of receiving the proper blood type from an Hispanic person (53%O+) than they would from another white person, since the most common blood type among whites is (O+ 37%) and is also most common among Hispanics (O+53%) of Hispanics have that blood type. 

If a white person with type O+ blood needs a battle-field transfusion and medics don't know the blood types of another white person available and an Hispanic person available, the best bet (53% O+) would be to give the white person a transfusion from a Hispanic person--NOT another white person.

All white people have a lesser chance of having O+ blood than do Hispanics (O+53).
 

	Caucasians	African American	Hispanic	Asian
O +	37%	47%	53%	39%
O -	8%	4%	4%	1%
A +	33%	24%	29%	27%
A -	7%	2%	2%	0.5%
B +	9%	18%	9%	25%
B -	2%	1%	1%	0.4%
AB +	3%	4%	2%	7%
AB -	1%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%

Dr. Dennis O'Neil Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marcos, California writes:

. . . patterns of ABO, Rh, and Diego blood type distributions are not similar to those for skin color or other so-called "racial" traits.  The implication is that the specific causes responsible for the distribution of human blood types have been different than those for other traits that have been commonly employed to categorize people into "races."  Since it would be possible to divide up humanity into radically different groupings using blood typing instead of other genetically inherited traits such as skin color, we have more conclusive evidence that the commonly used typological model for understanding human variation is scientifically unsound.

As a matter of science, Dr. Dennis O'Neil concludes that the belief in "race" has less basis in science than other more medically useful groupings.  He concludes that:
 

The more we study the precise details of human variation, the more we understand how complex are the patterns.  They cannot be easily summarized or understood.  Yet, this hard-earned scientific knowledge is generally ignored in most countries because of more demanding social and political concerns.  As a result, discrimination based on presumed "racial" groups still continues.  It is important to keep in mind that this "racial" classification often has more to do with cultural and historical distinctions than it does with biology.  In a very real sense, "race" is a distinction that is created by culture not biology.

Tyler Perry is Color-Aroused but He IS NOT an Anti-Black Color-Aroused Antagonist

I'm the editor of the blog, American Journal of Color Arousal, where we ( I ) study color-arousal issues from a cognitive behavioral perspective do determine whether a person is a color-aroused antagonist with respect to Black people and/or other skin color groups.

Tyler Perry's movies are certainly color aroused. He clearly has looked at some Black families, including his own. He clearly believes that Black people's culture or depictions of it are a worthy subject movies. He finds and evokes humor in Black people's foibles and even dysfunctional behaviors. His focus on Black people clearly is aroused by his own skin color and other Black individuals and families.  He's color-aroused.

Do thoughts (ideation) about Black people arouse his feelings of sadness, gladness, mirth and anguish, vengeance, fear and rage? I suspect that his films evoke IN HIM all of the above feelings and many more. Obviously, they do. He feels a special pull to do movies about Black people and that pull comes from his beliefs (ideation) and feelings (emotions).

Are his behaviors motivated by his color-aroused thoughts and feelings? Obviously they are. He makes movies about and for Black people because they interest him deeply.

Is Tyler Perry a color-aroused antagonist, targeting both himself and other Black people for unfair criticism and ridicule? I think the answer is "no." Tyler Perry's movies are funny to Black people because he identifies and creates characters who remind us of ourselves, our relatives and friends, in one way or another. 

When we see a Tyler Perry movie it's like listening to a masterful preacher who sleighs everyone with his incisive wit at one point or another, and we all walk away determined to do better in the future.
 
So, Tyler is aroused by skin color-associated ideation and emotions to make films about Blacks.  Is there anything wrong with that?  I prefer to see a movie about Blacks in key roles, with a Black sensibility.

Where is the anti-Black antagonism in Perry's movies? I can't find it.  Most people will agree that Tyler Perry makes us laugh--when he's a woman in his films and when he's a man. He is able to play the role of upper middle class educated man in control of his impulses just as he is capable of playing a late-middle aged Black woman (Madea) so outraged at the abuse of a women that she gets her gun and goes looking for the culprit.

Madea does what all of us would like to do (if it weren't illegal) when a Black woman is beaten and humiliated.  She pulls her gun and puts the fight and the strength in others who we too beaten down to stand up for themselves.

The trick to perceiving that Tyler Perry is not an anti-Black antagonist is in the striking themes where arrogant egotism always leads to humiliation, reconciliation and redemption.  The Tyler Perry characters with the worst Black male anti-Black-woman antagonists are morality plays made funny, passionate and dramatic, showing us each a part of ourselves that we need to work on and work out before it works on us.

Tyler Perry warns us not to become egotistic, arrogant and abusive, lest we find ourselves humbled in front of those very same people whom we believed we could abuse and humiliate with impunity.  Ultimately the theme of Tyler Perry's music is the possibility and necessity for redemption in all of us, which is a lesson which we all need to remember, regardless of our skin color.

Can "White History Year" Still Be Relevant in a Multicultural Society?

Mr. McWhorther (of The Root):

This is no time to end Black History Month.  What white America "gets" about Black people is equivalent to what a law student gets in his first two months of law school: confused and afraid, but certainly not fully educated.

The alternative to Black History Month is "White-History-Year". Before Black History Month, white and Black students learned about the French, Spanish Dutch and English settlers of America and were required to remember all of their names and dates. Meanwhile, we were not required to remember the name or date of any Black person whatsoever.

It was thought that no Black person had done anything worthy of being considered in "American History." And so "American History" was really nine or ten insufferable months of "White-History-Year" for grade school students. I don't want my nephews and nieces to suffer through that.

Black History Month's purpose is not just to teach whites about Blacks' contribution, but it is also to teach Black children about Blacks contributions. I don't think we can just assume that all Black children (or white children) know that Black man invented the blood bank:


http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bldrew.htm

and another Black man, Garret A. Morgan, invented the traffic light and gas masks:


http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventors/a/Garrett_Morgan.htm

If grade schools and universities don't teach this information to Black and white and Latino students, then how will they ever know? Does everyone Black and white "get it" already? I didn't know a Black man invented the gas mask until I began researching the names of these Black inventors in order to post this comment.

Blacks and whites still need Black History Month because it compels text book publishers to include Blacks in their textbooks and it also compels white teachers to follow the curriculum by discussing Blacks, at least for twenty days out of each year.

Finally, we cannot end Black History Month because the alternative is White-History-Year.