Knowledge of Anti-"Racial" Finding of Human Genome Project Becoming More Generally Known

I am very pleased with the progress the evidence of the Human Genome Project is making in educations the USA and the world to the fact that biological "race" and "ethnicity" simply don't exist. Of course, this acknowledgement raises suspicions about the usefulness of the terms "racism", "racist" and, perhaps most of all, "racial," since "racial" is a word that denotates having a biological characteristic which biological characteristic simply does not exist in biology.

There are now almost five hundred thousands hits at Google for the search, "dna human genome race". The foremost hit at Google for this search is the Wikipedia page on "Human Genome Project", which ironically states under the heading, "Key findings of Genome Project:"

All human races (sic) are 99.99 % alike, so racial (sic) differences are genetically insignificant. (citation needed)

What the Human Genome Project actually says is that "race" doesn't exist at all. However, those writing and editing the Wikipedia page on the Human Genome Project are unable to integrate this scientific information because they are so hidebound to using unscientific terms like "race" and "racial". Confusion reigns, even as science tears down old hypothesis and propaganda in an effort to replace them with empirical scientific truths.

What the Human Genome Project actually says about "race" and "racial" is that there is convincing evidence that these concepts have no basis in science and they simply do not exist at all.

"DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other."

I'm not going to bother to fix the Wikipedia page, because some idiot will inevitably change it back, which is something they cannot do at my various blogs.

The page of the Human Genome Project including the above statement recounts an extensive effort to explain the conclusions based on DNA, but in a way that would not upset Black people. Ironically, Black people have largely ignored the findings and white people simply act as if this particular result of the Human Genome Project didn't exist. However, as I acknowledged above, just the fact that there are so many pages at Google addressing this question is positive for the prospect that humanity will someday absorb what human science has discovered.

What Did You Do to Help Senator Obama Become President Obama?

This is a provocative and ultimately persuasive argument I made against John Edwards' candidacy, for the purpose of helping Hillary Clinton and/or Barack Obama to end the 43-term white male monopoly of the presidency. I think this argument, in its various iterations, was influential, because Garance Franke-Ruta quoted it in The American Prospect: in an article entitled, "What Edwards Doesn't Get About Poverty: John Edwards's failure to appeal to low-income voters proves the poor want more than just new programs."

I also made the argument (modified) at Huffington Post (Edwards Tells Supporters, 'Vote for Me Because I'm a White Man.'), and at my own blogs and elsewhere, and it helped to serve notice on Edwards and progressives that Blacks and women were not going to support the election of a 44th white male president in 2008. I was reviled and exiled from many a blog, but I was right and I was vindicated, and that's what ultimately counts to me personally, but not nearly as much as ending the 43-term white male monopoly of the presidency.

It's worth noting that the graphics below infuriated supporters of John Edwards specifically and of the white male supremacy paradigm in general. I also know these arguments were influential because Hillary Clinton's Internet Activism Manager Peter Daou called me by telephone in Brazil to personally enlist my support for Hillary, (for all the good it ultimately did him and his candidate.) Daou asked me not to discuss our conversation before Hillary formally announced her candidacy, and I kept my promise not to do so. Actually, Hillary is Secretary of State now, so none of our efforts on her behalf were wasted, even if virtually all Blacks eventually rejected Billary's color-aroused politicking and were driven to support Senator Barack Obama instead. "Billary and Me: Time to Break the Silence"

WHY would electing John Edwards Lift Women and Blacks from Poverty?

Cross-posted at http://francislholland.blogspot.com/

This is an historical and political analysis of the central premise that underlies John Edwards' claim to the Presidency. This essay asks and explores the question, "Why Will Electing John Edwards Raise Women and Minorities Out of Poverty?" Everything in the above graphic represents only my own original paraphrased appreciation of the thrust of arguments made by others.

Everyone who has superficially studied the problem of American poverty knows that, although all demographic groups are represented among the poor, women and minorities are more likely to be poor than other segments of our society (e.g. white men).

In fact, historical patterns of discrimination that legally prevented women and minorities from buying and owning property, opening bank accounts, and moving to areas where opportunities were greater - all of these governmentally sponsored factors and more led to the feminization and the "racialization" of poverty. The poverty of Blacks began when we were forced to work for free, with government returning us to our "owners" if we escaped slavery with the intention of being paid for our own labor.

In light of this history of the causes of poverty, it is quite impossible to talk about alleviating poverty without discussing how to systematically root out the carefully lain government sponsored roots of poverty in de jure and de facto gender and color-based discrimination. To the degree that there is anything at all that the government is still doing that intentionally or effectively disadvantages the target populations of a proposed new poverty program, to be effective in alleviating poverty government must stop doing anything and everything that has historically led and continues to lead to the feminization and colorization of poverty.

Let's face it: Poverty programs are expensive. Just gathering the statistics to know whether the programs are succeeding or not typically costs millions of dollars, while any intervention to lift people from poverty costs more still. The Republican criticism of the poverty programs of the 1960's is that liberals were unwilling to examine the assumptions underlying these programs and were similarly unwilling to carefully measure whether the programs actually worked or not.

But there is one assumption that neither Republicans nor Democrats have been willing to examine: the unexamined assumption that women and minorities can be lifted out of poverty without increasing the representation of women and minorities in government. The corollary unexamined assumption is "women and minorities can be lifted out of poverty by increasing the power of white men." Effectively, every time we vote for a white man over a woman or minority, we vote to increase the overall power of that demographic group while maintaining the political powerlessnes of the other demographic groups.

The assumption that government sponsored poverty programs and benefits can improve the condition of women and minorities without increased access for women and minorities to the levers of power is an untested and unproven assumption that has provided precious little enduring results in the past. But the economic status of women and minorities HAS consistently improved when their voting rights and access to elective office have increased. It makes intuitive sense that the political will to continue supporting poverty programs will be stronger if members of the demographic group benefiting from the programs are in elective office, where they can vote to continue funding for programs that are helpful to them.

Arguably the most enduring government-sponsored act of the 20th Century toward alleviating poverty was the guarantee to women and minorities of the right to vote and hold elective office - a right that we had never had before the 20th Century. And, arguably, a substantial portion of the enduring alleviation of poverty that has occurred has come directly from the new right of women and minorities vote for candidates who represent our interests and to hold office and thereby help fashion an economy and legal framework in which women and minorities, too, are likely to prosper.

Here is but one example of how increased political power within a demographic group leads to increased economic well-being: If you want to open a small business, you generally need a business license and various other government approvals. Ostensibly, licenses are granted according to Byzantine rules that anyone can master with sufficient lawyers and money. However, in most places, personally knowing the members of the various licensing boards (or the officials who appointed the licensing officials) is very helpful in obtaining crucial information and businesses licenses that allow a person to open a business, work and improve the financial condition of self and family. To the extent that a demographic group lacks this informal access, it will also lack access to the government when it needs government licences and permitting.

Considering how many people are not poor because they have started businesses that result in steady income, it seems obvious that electing more women and minorities to government for the purpose of helping each other to obtain information access, and business licenses is an obvious anti-poverty intervention.

Until the Civil War, white men used their control of state and national government to prevent slaves from successfully escaping and competing with white men for the proceeds of Black men's labor. White men forbade women to work outside the home, effectively forcing women to work for white men. If only white men ran the government today, would they not use their control of business licenses to preclude women and minorities from opening competing businesses, just as they once used their political power to prevent Blacks and women from opening bank accounts?

Isn't it true that whomever holds the reigns of government tends to make more money?

America has tried various solutions to end poverty, but increasing women and minorities' participation in government has never explicitly been one of the government-sponsored solutions. Is this solution so absurd that it ought not be tried, at least once, particularly considering that many other solutions that have been mostly unavailing are nonetheless tried over and over again?

Enter John Edwards: Let's ignore, for a moment, the fact that electing John Edwards would perpetuate the historical pattern of disadvantaging women and minorities by never electing a president who is not a white male. Let's focus specifically and exclusively for a moment on the extraordinary claim that underlies John Edwards' claim to the presidency.

John Edwards says that America's most urgent problem is poverty, and he proposes that we elect him President and give him 30 years to alleviate this problem. But, most importantly for this discussion: While running for President against three liberal Democrats who are members of the target demograpic groups most affected by poverty (women, Blacks and Latinos), John Edwards has made the extraordinary and counter-intuitive assertion that electing him, a white man, is the best way to reduce the poverty of women, Blacks, and Latinos.

Of course, Edwards' is a self-serving premise, i.e., "The best way to help THEM is to give something to ME!" But showing that the premise is self-serving does not, by itself, prove that the premise is incorrect. It merely make the premise suspect.

It is not impossible that electing John Edwards can help to alleviate poverty. The question is, "Is electing John Edwards the BEST way to alleviate the poverty of women and minorities who have historically lacked the political power to organize society in a way that would support their economic enfranchisement?

When a politician claims that giving food to people in Washington DC will reduce hunger in Washington DC, then we are apt to agree. But when a politician claims that giving food to people in Boston is the best way to decrease hunger in Milwaulkee, that is an EXTRAORDINARY claim that requires extraordinary analysis of the assumptions underlying the proposed program.

Many people will demand to know how giving a liberal Democratic woman or minority the power to help shape the economy and the economic framework within which business operate would help lift women and minorities out of poverty. To me, this is like the question, "How will the distribution of food in Boston help to alleviate the problem of hunger in Boston?" It's like asking, "How will giving a fisherman a boat help him to fish?" People who have access to the resources the need are more likely to use those resources to improve their circumstances. If this is NOT so, then nothing Government does will help women and minorities. So, the question is whether to hand out more benefits or to empower women and minorities to benefit from sharing the reigns of power.

If one of the reasons for governing is to manage the economy in a manner that helps to improve the financial circumstances of citizens, doesn't it stand to reason that if responsible liberal Democratic women and minorities are elected, they will use the power entrusted to them to help women and minorities succeed economically?

Why would we choose to believe the opposite: that white men, (who are competing with women and minorities for resources and advantages) will use the power of elective office to help people who are NOT of their demographic group? Everything in America's history and its present circumstances - with white men in power - suggests that the opposite is true. The longer white men are the majority of the US Senate, the US House and have a lock on the Presidency, while controlling the apparatus of the power of the 50 states, the longer women and minorities will lack the political power to lift themselves out of poverty.

I think that, for the purposes of our discussion today, it is essential that we limit ourselves to testing John Edwards' premise, that electing him is the best way to lift women and Blacks out of poverty, better than electing a liberal Democratic woman or Black person. That question is sufficiently complex that it is worth spending at least one day considering it, by itself, before going into the voting booth.

How, specifically, is electing John Edwards going to reduce the poverty of women and minorities. I think this is a fair question to ask?

As a threshold issue, it seems necessary to remind readers that any discussion of whom our 2008 presidential nominee will be should necessarily be limited to a discussion of the Democrats. Whenever I assert that electing a woman or minority president will help American in one way or anther, someone urgentlydemands to know whether electing a REPUBLICAN woman or minority would help America. That is a specious, in my mind, question since the premise of all of our activities is that electing Democrats is better. Moreover, since there are Democratic women and minorities running for president, it is hardly necessary to speculate about the effect of electing a Republican candidate.

Responding to the proposal to elect a woman by asking whether a Republican woman would suffice is like responding to the same proposal by asking whether a child-molesting cannibalistic ex-convict schizophrenic woman would suffice. How is that relevant to the question of whether, as between two elected and respected liberal Democratic officials, the election of a woman or minority will help America to progress? Certainly, raising the specter of electing a woman or Black Republican is an unhelpful and superficial debating technique with no relevance whatever to the discussion at hand.

And yet this technique is often used by "progressives" to derail urgent discussions of whether increased numbers of women and minorities in government will significantly change the nature of American society. The technique only serves, if tolerated, to perpetuate the status quo, the control of America's government by white men.

And so I pose the urgent question: In light of the high correlation between historical patterns of political disenfranchisement and poverty for America's women and minorities, with white men in power, how do we know that electing electing John Edwards as president is the best way to lift politically disenfranchised women and minorities out of poverty?

To me, the premise is counter-intuitive, lacks empirical support, is not based on an historical or sociological appreciation of the direct causal relationship between the feminization and colorization of political powerlessness and the feminization and colorization of poverty.

Author's note: I have designed the graphics here to represent my own interpretation of the political and economic facts involved, and so I have paraphrased, in my own way, what I believe to be the thrust of the arguments involved. I suspect that many people will disagree with these representations, but the purpose of these graphics is to challenge assumptions and encourage us to clarify our thinking about our underlying premises.

Is Exposure to Hair Straightening Chemicals Causing Your Child's Asthma Attacks?

Please see the above trailer for Chris Rock's movie, "Good Hair," in which he has to answer his little daughters question, "Daddy, why is my hair 'bad'?" Many Black people in Brazil (where I live) and in the United States are using formaldehyde to straighten their hair. They call it a "progressive permanent", although it doesn't last more than a week or two under the best conditions, if only because new hair grows that has not been "processed". Then women tie their hair back as tightly as possible so that the curly new growth will be as invisible as possible. Otherwise their half chemically permanent and half DNA permanent hair looks like a broom that has been randomly hacked at with a pair of sharp scissors. But, if this many women use formaldehyde to straighten their hair, it must be harmless to them and their children, right? Not quite. The Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry says, Formaldehyde is a nearly colorless gas with a pungent, irritating odor even at very low concentrations (below 1 ppm). Its vapors are flammable and explosive. Because the pure gas tends to polymerize, it is commonly used and stored in solution. Formalin, the aqueous solution of formaldehyde (30% to 50% formaldehyde), typically contains up to 15% methanol as a stabilizer. So people are straightening their hair with a "flammable and explosive liquid", including "methanol"? Methanol is used as an alternative to gasoline in cars. It could still be safe to put formaldehyde and methanol in your and your children's hair, right? Not quite. According to the US Centers for Disease Control, Inhalation of formaldehyde can cause airway irritation, bronchospasm, and pulmonary edema. Absorption of large amounts of formaldehyde via any route can cause severe systemic toxicity, leading to metabolic acidosis, tissue and organ damage, and coma. There is no antidote for formaldehyde. Treatment consists of supportive measures including decontamination (flushing of skin and eyes with water, gastric lavage, and administration of activated charcoal), administration of supplemental oxygen, intravenous sodium bicarbonate and/or isotonic fluid, and hemodialysis. Meanwhile Black children have dramatically higher incidence of asthma than white children living in the same cities. White people do not straighten their hair as much or as often as Blacks. According to the University of Illinois at Chicago, Asthma prevalence has been found to be higher in urban areas. A survey of inner-city children in New York City showed that 14.3% reported ever having asthma, and 8.6% reported current asthma, a rate twice that of the general U.S. population (4.3%). A study of asthma mortality in Chicago found an overall asthma mortality rate of 16.42 deaths per million from 1980 to 1988 for persons aged 5 to 34 years; this is approximately three times the rate for the general U.S. population. Rates were highest among poor black persons. Targonski et al.8 studied asthma mortality among persons aged 5 to 34 years in Chicago from 1968 to 1991, and found a 337% increase in mortality for African Americans, while there was no significant increase among Whites. A study of asthma hospitalization among 5- to 14-year old Medicaid patients in Michigan also found much larger increases among urban black children, from 3.2 per 1000 in 1980 to 7.1 per 1000 in 1984. http://www.ijc.org/rel/boards/hptf/pdf/VOL1IS5E.PDF One Swedish study linked formaldehyde levels in the home to the presence of asthma: Although there has been little research on indoor pollutant concentrations and asthma, there is some evidence of an association. Researchers in Sweden22 measured levels of formaldehyde and VOCs, along with other indoor factors, in homes of 47 asthmatics and 41 nonasthmatic subjects. Mean formaldehyde concentrations were 29 and 17 ug/m3 in homes with and without subjects reporting nocturnal breathlessness. The mean levels of total VOCs in the living room were 780 ug/m3 and 300 ug/m3 in homes of subjects with and without reported nocturnal breathlessness. Is it possible that the formaldehyde in Black women's and children's and even men's hair, at the beauty salon and at home (and in the homes of poor Black people who cannot afford salons) is causing their children to have life threatening asthma attacks? One way to test the hypothesis would be for Blacks with formaldehyde-straightened hair to go without chemical straighteners for a year, in themselves, their home and their children, to see if their children's asthma attacks subside. However, this is not a test, since at least half of the thirty children in your child's classroom also have trace but still poisonous levels of formaldehyde in their hair. A whole community might have to try to be hair-straightening free to see if children's asthma decreases.

I suspect most Black women will prefer to keep straightening their hair with formaldehyde, buying asthma medication, and taking their kids to the emergency room with severe and life-threatening asthma attacks. After all, the vast majority of Black women straighten their hair and have no intention of desisting, no matter what the consequences for their children's health. So how should Black women respond to the mere suspicion that the formaldehyde in their hair, and the formaldehyde to which children are exposed during hair straightening may be causing children's asthma attacks? The Centers for Disease Control says, Formaldehyde is a highly toxic systemic poison that is absorbed well by inhalation. The vapor is a severe respiratory tract and skin irritant and may cause dizziness or suffocation. Contact with formaldehyde solution may cause severe burns to the eyes and skin. Respiratory Protection: Positive-pressure, self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) is recommended in response situations that involve exposure to potentially unsafe levels of formaldehyde vapor. If you have a children who suffers from asthma attacks, should you expose them to formaldehyde during the process of straightening their hair, or while waiting for your hair to be straightened,and then being subject to your hair all day and every time you hug them? Should you keep formaldehyde-based straightening preparations in the home, where they contaminate the air that your asthmatic child breathes? If you want to kill your child, this would be a good way to do it without being prosecuted. Just expose your child to hair straightening formaldehyde and ignore her/him when s/he is unable to breathe. If your child has asthma attacks as well as exposure to straightened hair and hair straightening, consider this medical wisdom from the CDC: In cases of respiratory compromise, secure airway and respiration via endotracheal intubation. If not possible, perform cricothyroidotomy if equipped and trained to do so. Treat patients who have bronchospasm with aerosolized bronchodilators. The use of bronchial sensitizing agents in situations of multiple chemical exposures may pose additional risks. Consider the health of the myocardium before choosing which type of bronchodilator should be administered. Cardiac sensitizing agents may be appropriate; however, the use of cardiac sensitizing agents after exposure to certain chemicals may pose enhanced risk of cardiac arrhythmias (especially in the elderly). Surely, most parents would not allow their children to be exposed to toxic chemicals unless it was necessary to assure that women and children have straight hair instead of "bad" hair. The National Institutes of Health says: Indoors, products that contain volatile organic compounds release emissions when you use them, and to a smaller degree, when they are stored. You can be exposed to volatile organic compounds at home if you use cleaning, painting, or hobby supplies that contain them. ( . . . ) Long-term exposure to volatile organic compounds can cause damage to the liver, kidneys and central nervous system. Short-term exposure to volatile organic compounds can cause eye and respiratory tract irritation, headaches, dizziness, visual disorders, fatigue, loss of coordination, allergic skin reactions, nausea, and memory impairment. National (Emphasis added.) So, there it is. A direct relationship between hair straightening chemicals and medical illnesses that affect Black children (whose hair is often straightened and who are surrounded by people with formaldehyde in their hair). When children go to school, they are surrounded by other children with formaldehyde and other toxins in their hair. When they come home from school, their parents' friends and relatives are toxic waste dumps from base of their hair to the tops of their heads. And then they spend Saturdays in the beauty salon with mommy, where known respiratory poisons are present in large quantities (unless they can't afford the salons and do several womens hair at home at once). Should we wait for more evidence that formaldehyde and other hair straightening chemicals are poisoning our children, leaving them breathless and causing trips to the emergency room, or should we take the poisons out of their environment and see if they stop having life-threatening asthma attacks?

Do Some People Who Straighten Their Hair Need Psychiatric Treatment?

Cross-posted at the PamsHouseBlend and the American Journal of Color Arousal. After four years of living with my step-children, I've simply come to the transitional conclusion that I simply don't like much of what comes out of their mouths and their behavior, particularly recently, with respect to their hair. This has become a dinosaur bone of contention between us. At this time, I have decided simply not to speak with them at all, about anything, lest I say things that hurt and offend them and they respond in kind. I expected it when my step-daughter told me, "You're not my father", because all step children say that sooner or later. But, when one of them said that I like my dog better than her and she hopes my dog "will hurry up and die", that hurt and infuriated me more than words can describe. Certainly, I provoked them, by pointing out that spending forty percent of my oldest daughter's internship income to straighten the two girls' hair ought not be a highter priority than paying what is already owed for straightening my younger step-daughter's teeth, and the monthly maintenance. I also provoked my oldest daughter by asking her how much it would cost her to straighten her hair once a week at a salon, on an anualised basis. (I already know that it will cost 20% of her income.) I further pointed out to her that an electric straigtening comb does affect the family finances, because it will consume electricity for which her parents will pay. These are the sorts of observations that infuriate my step-daughters. Yes, this decision simply to refrain from talking with my step-daughters is born of anger and hurt, but sometimes anger and hurt can help us to define and maintain appropriate boundaries between ourselves and others. It is certainly more mature to restrict relationships with others than to say or do things to them that are intentionally hurtful. Arms-length truces may not be as good as friendship, but they are better than open warfare. At this time, my wife's two girls, 14 and 16, are going through the developmental stage where they realize that their hair is a potential point of attractiveness and the more attractive their hair is perceived to be, and they perceive themselves to be, the more attractive they are peceived to be overall. (Should I warn my oldest daughter that she seems more concerned about her hair than about a college entrance exam which takes place in two months and guarantees a full scholarship? No, that statement would be argumentative and provocative, regardless of the information contained within.) These girls talk so much about their hair, and their friends' hair, and play with and organize and experiment with their hair so much that they remind me of three year-old girls playing with dolls, or two year old boys who have suddenly discovered they have penises, which become their favorite toy and fascination. These girls remind me of the white woman who inspired my essay, "I saw a white woman masturbating in the subway." There are many reasons why my two step-daughters want to straighten their hair. For example, when they chemically or mechanically straighten their hair, their bosses, peers and others tell them that they had never perceived them until they saw them with their hair straight. All of that is a very strong motive for teens to want to straighten their hair, and that's why I would estimate that 99.9% of Afro-Brazilian women in the city where I live "treat"/subjugate their hair so that it looks as much as possible like the hair of Scandinavian women, although not all of these Afro-Brazilian women actually turn their hair blond. At least three times a day for the last four years, my younger step-daughter has exclaimed how much she wants to buy a hot comb and straighten her hair. She says with determination, "I'm going to buy a hot comb," and then the argument starts between her and her mother. The older one, 16, simply decided this week that, since she has a job, she can spend the money as she likes, even on submitting to chemical and mechanical hair straightening without her mother's permission. And now the male salon owner says she's so beautiful with her hair straight that he wants to feature her in a modeling show after straightening her hair again and adding two additional colors to it. I can't help but wonder about this man's motives, but I know my concerns will be rejected out of hand, so I'm not going to bother casting my pearls on the swine-like mind of an adolescent. This male hairdresser who eulogizes my step-daughter's beauty after she pays him a fifth of her monthly salary only has my step-daughters bright future in his mind, I'm sure. He doesn't want to have sex with my step-daughter. He doesn't want to take nude photographs of her while he's modeling her hair. And he is not trying to sell her as a sex slave in Italy or Portugal, as happens to so many other Brazilian girls who believe Hollywood-like promises. He only wants to put lye and dye in her hair and make her into a star! Lye or formaldehyde and dye. What could be the matter with that? Recently, a fifteen year-old girl of our acquaintance took off to another state with a 35 year old suitor, who then threatened to kill her and her family if she tried to return home. I know my step-daughters were able to learn from that girl's experience, and I know that the dangers from which I try to protect my step-daughters all have some level of relevance, but I simply don't have the patience and forebearance anymore. I am learning MY limits in the realm of step-fatherhood.

attyfrancislholland :: Do Some People Who Straighten Their Hair Need Psychiatric Treatment?

One Brazilian newspaper reported, Em moda no mundo inteiro, os cabelos lisos viraram mania e vem mexendo, literalmente, com a cabeça das mulheres. Cuidar das medeixas, portanto, passou a ser uma atividade fundamental na vida de quem deseja ter cabelo liso . . . Straight hair is in style the world over, and has become a mania that messes with, literally, the heads of women. Taking care of hair, as such, has become a fundamental activity in the lives of those who want their hair to be straight . . . It costs my older step-daughter fully twenty percent of her monthly intern salary to straighten her hair at the beauty salon, plus another at least ten percent to treat it with various chemicals and creams. So, thirty percent of her income is spent straightening her hair, while her mother works seven days a week to pay for braces that straighten their teeth. I believe in straightened teeth, but I believe that people caught straightening their hair ought to be immediately seen by a psychiatrist to determine whether they can stop straightening their hair on their own or whether inpatient or outpatient psychiatric care is necessary. Of course many of the ten people who read this will insist that I am being extreme, but I can prove that I am not. One of the symptoms of the psychiatric condition that Michael Jackson had was his obsession with having perfectly straight hair, as would a Scandinavian or an Italian with no recent African heritage. If Michael Jackson had gotten treatment for the psychiatric illness that made him want to look like a white person, then he might not have become or remained addicted to the drugs that killed his pain, some of which pain was clearly the pain of having African DNA inside him in the context of a nation that hates many of the phsysical characteristics associated with recent African DNA. Of course, everyone's DNA is 99.9% the same, regardless of their skin color and superficial color-associated physical characteristics, such as the texture of their hair and the shape of their nose. Michael Jackson was led to drug addiction and a demand for a suicidal drug overdose partly because of the pain he felt wanting to eradicate the 0.1% of his DNA that was of recent African descent. The fight against color-aroused and color-associated physical characteristic-aroused disorder has only recently appeared on the radar screen of the American Psychiatric Association, and most people do not believe there is anything wrong with wanting to look like a white person in terms of one or more phsysical characteristics. Most psychiatrists don't believe it is wrong to viscerally hate Black people's physical characteristics. If they thought hating, fearing, stigmatizing, being envious of, and feeling subconsciously inferior to Black people constituted a mental disorder, the would describe this mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. And if psychiatrists believed that some Blacks' feelings of disgust and revulsion at one or more aspects of our physical characteristics was a mental disorder, again, they would describe this disorder in the DSM. If psychiatrists believed that attempts to eradicate the visual cue that arouses in them such emotional pain, amounted to a psychiatric disorder e.g. behavior such as nose cutting, and painting carcinogens like lye and formalehyde on the human head were acts of self-destructiveness, they would say so. Since they haven't done so, we must conclude that they do not think it is an illness for whites to feel and act upon the disgust and revulsion that some of them they feel when looking at curly hair and afros, and likewise they do not think it is an illness for Black people to feel disgust and revulsion when they think of themselves or others having curly hair, Afros, Braids and Rasta Locks. It is considered "natural" for whites to hate our skin-color and skin color-associated physical characteristics, and it is considered equally "natural" for us to hate our skin color and skin color-associated physical characteristics. Many people believe that, in any case. I believe that (a) ideation aroused by perceiving brown skin and brown skin associated physical characteristics, such as, "I have to straighten my hair or I will be ugly"; combined with (b) extreme hatred, revulsion, fear, disgust and other upsetting and debilitating emotions aroused by our and others' skin color and color-associated phsyical characteristics, such as hair color and texture; combined with (c) behavior that is antagonistic toward the ideational and emotional cue, i.e. putting lye or formaldehyde in one's hair to make it straight, even when it hurts and causes hair to fall out,(d) all add up to a psychiatric disorder that I call "Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder" ("ECAD"). My wife recounts to me that she remembers her older sister putting lye in her hair to make it straight and then running out of the house screaming, "It hurts, it hurts!" She had permanent scars on her forehead and elsewhere as a result of burning herself with the lye. Had she put the lye in her mouth instead of in her hair, she would have been taken to a psychiatric hospital. However, it is considered "natural" in Western societies for Blacks to pay any price, in terms of their finances and their health, to have their hair look more Scandinavian or Italian, regardless of the risks or the cost. When Michael Jackson died, among the many chemicals he had in his bedroom was a cream intended to lighten the color of his skin. We all say, "Michael Jackson was freaky." Yet, people who treat their hair as Michael Jackson treated his hair are "normal", only because the norm itself mentally disordered. I believe whites who automatically experience extreme arousal when they perceive color and color-associated physical characteristics are whites who need psychiatric treatment. Many Blacks agree with me that it is "sick" to hate Blacks, but they nonetheless insist that whites who are "sick" should not receive psychiatric treatment for their illness. We prefer to call this "racism" (a sociological problem) than to recognize that extreme color-aroused illness in some individuals is the sine qua non of "racism" in society. It is impossible for one to exist without at least some of the other. Still, many Blacks argue with me that hating Blacks and our characteristics is not evidence of a mental disorder, but is just "racism". Maybe they hold onto this believe as drowing person hangs onto a life preserver because if hating Blacks and our physical characteristics constitutes a mental disorder then many Blacks (like the ones who cannot conceive of going to church with their hair unstraightened) have this Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder as well. "Racism" ideology puts all of the onus for the hatred of Blacks' phsyical characteristics on white people. Extreme Color Aroused Disorder studies and one day hopefully will treat the symptoms of self-hatred in Black people as well as the symptoms of color-aroused disorder in whites. Ultimately, anyone who has repeatedly burned his/her head, over a period of six months or more, in an attempt to make his/her hair look more straight and (coincidentally?) more like white people's hair, is a person who should be screened for Exteme Color Aroused Disorder. Some people if not all are putting lye and formaldehyde in their hair because they hate or feel disgust and revulsion at the hair with which many Black people are naturally born.

I'm Revolted: My Oldest Step-Daughter has Straigtened Her Wavy Hair

The societal pressures they feel to straighten their hair is intense.

In music videos, television news casts, and at school, my two step-daughters perceive that virtually every Black woman they know chemically or mechanically straightens her hair. So, it ought not surprise me that my sixteen year-old step daughter, graduating from high school in three months, has taken advantage of her new decision-making authority not to choose a university or search for scholarships that suit her interests, but rather to pass an electric iron through her naturally long and wavy hair.

Like too many teenagers, she doesn't value what makes her unique, but wishes she could be "just like everybody else." My wife and I have expressed our opinions to her since before she was an adolescent - that the pressure for Black women to straighten their hair is part of a determined effort by whites - in the media and even in job interviews - to assert that their hair, like everything else about them, is inherently better than Blacks' natural superficial physical characteristics.

(I know that many Black women are born with naturally straight hair and I am not talking about them, so let's not distract ourselves with information irrelevant to this particular discussion.)

I'm talking about the tremendous pressure Black women feel to straighten their hair - at any cost - in order, effectively, to look more like white girls. (Some Black women, like my step-daughters, are born looking more like white girls because they have DNA from white people in their family genetic heritages.) However, long and wavy hair has not been enough for them. They want their hair to be perfectly straight.

This issue is not merely one of aesthetics. Here in Brazil, women use a process called "permanent progressive" wherein formaldehyde (a known carcinogen) is placed in the hair and then washed out. If two much formaldehyde is used or it is not washed out soon enough, Black women can literally die for straight hair. I reported such a case at the American Journal of Color Arousal (AMJCA) on August 14, 2009:

The television news report in this YouTube video says that 150 children per year die in Brazil while styling their hair, with 49% dying as the result of electrical shocks. “Parents should not allow their children to use these electrical mechanisms because of the risk of electrical shocks” says one professional interviewed on the news.

One of Brasil's top media outlets reported:

Women never stop efforts to become more beautiful. For centuries, they have been squeezing into corsets to keep their waists thin. In China and Japan, women bandaged their feet to make them smaller. Now the madness has gone beyond hair removal. Many women are putting their health (and their lives) in danger to keep the hair smooth and voluminous.

The death of a 33 year-old housewife in Missouri, this week raised the controversy over the new hair straightening techniques. Maria Ení da Silva died after undergoing a escova progressiva (permanent straigtening). According to her family, she applied a mixture of cream and formaldehyde at a hairdressing salon on Saturday, March 17, and was directed not to wash her hair for three days. During this period, she complained of headaches, shortness of breath and itching. On Tuesday, March 20, she fell ill, was taken to two hospitals and died. Globo.Com

This story is particularly maddening for my wife and me. Last year, disobeying my wife’s firm and repeated decision, our youngest daughter went to a local store and bought an electrical hair straightener, because virtually all of the girls at her school electrically or chemically straighten their hair. The social pressure she feels to straighten hair is intense. When girls straighten their hair, their peers, boys, parents and community suddenly begin to say, “You look beautiful. You look so pretty with your hair straight.”

Since my wife and I are unable to convince our daughters that their hair is beautiful in its natural Black state, I have warned them not to straighten their hair in the bathroom, where the electric iron can fall on the floor and transmit 120 volts of electricity to girls' (and boys') wet feet, freeze them in their tracks and electrocute them, causing them to fall on the floor where the electricity burns their bodies in a different place every time they try to free themselves from the force of their store-bought electric chairs.

What Black girls don't realize is that white girls have this hair without endangering their lives, while for Black girls there is danger, expense and time wasted that could otherwise be spent choosing a college and getting better grades that would lead to full scholarships. While white girls prepare for professions, Black girls strain to look like white girls or like Black girls with white genetic heritage.

The most common violence promoted by music videos is not the violence on the streets. It's the violence done to Black girls' and women's hair.

Every few months, I check in with my brothers and sisters in the afrosphere and tell them once again that (a) "race" doesn't exist and (b) "race" is an epithet that we are called and that we call ourselves. Today, I visited the Field Negro blog and made the same argument once again, for all the good it does:

The word "race" appears 441 MILLION times in the last year, in a Google search of USA English usage. This is so even when you exclude unrelated topics that might use the word "race" like "bicycle -bike -foot -athletic -grease -run"."

The word "race" (raça) appears two million times in a Google search of Brazilian usage over the last year.

So, even adjusted for population, USA people used the word "race" 150 times more often than Brazilian people over the last year.

Above you say, "What followed was a lively discussion about politics, race, (sic) [politics of skin color] and the problems of urban A-merry-ca."

So what difference does it make if you remove the word "race" and replace it with the phrase "politics of skin color"?

The only difference is that white supremacists love the word "race" because their view of their role in the world is based on their conviction that their white "race" is superior. But if "race" doesn't exist, then it's impossible for "race" to be what makes them better than us. They have to fall back on skin color, and an Obama-electing majority of Americans agree that skin color alone can't make one person better than another.

So what's wrong with using the word "race"? It's a validation of white supremacist ideology. You say you won't cosign Republican bullshit, but everytime you and they agree that what separates us is "race" and not reaction to people's skin color, you are validating THEIR view and showing that you don't have a view of your own. Some of us are still using the slave names that we got because our great grandparents lived on "Johnson's" plantation and all of Johnson's slaves' last names were "Johnson."

Others of us are still using, validating and teaching slavery-era concepts, like the concept of "race".

When will America become post-racial? Certainly not before we acknowledge that what we have been ratcheting up skin-color into RACE!!!, when "race is really nothing more than skin color and skin color-based politics.

So, keep validating the white supremacists by joining them in the carnival of ubiquitous use of the word "race"! By joining them you can best oppose them.

What we call race is nothing more than skin color, and the proof, in your own post, is that you say you and the Republican discussed politics and "race". Even using the sociological meaning of "race", it amounts to nothing more than power relationships (politics) associated with skin color. So, basically you said above that you discussed politics and the politics of skin color with the Republican guy.

That's redundant. I'm willing to bet that you really only discussed the politics of skin color, and didn't discuss any politics that were not about the politics of skin color. So, by saying politics and "race", you're acknowledging that you are co-signing and validating the BIOLOGICAL concept of "race", in which our genes make us so fundamentally different from white people that we are not even members of the same species, or are some sort of sub-species of the human family.

That concept has been completely disproved, as a matter of genetic science, by the Human Genome Project. But, let's not confuse ourselves with facts. Let's just keep using the same word that appears so prominently in Klu Klux Klan literature and on the Stormfront White Supremacist website. Hey, if you can't beat them, join them, right?

And let's keep pretending that when the white-news media uses the word "race" ubiquitously, they're doing it to help us Blacks maintain our sense of identity.

You've gotta be f***ing kidding, right? Whites love the word "race" and the use it 470 MILLION times in one year (along with Blacks), because the word "race" is part of maintaining THEIR sense of who they are (superior) and THEIR social and economic privilege.

You wanna know when American will become post-racial? Well, imagine that your mother-in-law contracted Swine Flu, but YOU insisted on referring to her condition as her "piggishness". :) For so long as you call her "piggish", there will be no peace in your family. Piggish, like race, is an epithet. If you are still using the word "piggish" when referring to your mother-in-law, then you are still in conflict with her and that conflict will go on FOREVER until you change your vocabulary. And then the bitterness will still last a few more years.

The same is true for the word "race." We have a chromatic difference from whites. Since some of us Blacks have straight hair and pointy noses and still are considered Blacks, it's the SKIN COLOR that determines who is who. For so long as you insist on exaggerating the nature of the biological differences between us by using the utterly unscientific "race" word, we will continue to argue about it, if only because it is so amorphous, and you can never quite define something that doesn't exist in the first place to everyone's satisfaction.

Whites and Blacks are at each other's throats partly because the "race" word is so laden with ridiculous hand-me-down stereotypes and insults that the mere use of the word is like saying that Blacks' difference from whites is our piggishness. The word "race" poisons the well.

Not using the word "race" will not magically make everything better, any more than not calling your mother-in-law piggish magically turn your relationship with her into gold. But calling her piggish WILL inevitably and undoubtedly prevent the day when your relationship will change for the better.

Like piggishness, the word "race" is an epithet that whites designed especially for us, and that we love so much we are not willing to let it go. Franz Fanon said that Blacks would imitate the oppressors and internalize the oppressors language and culture. But I guess he wasn't referring to places like AMERICA!

If you ever check in with Google and discover that the word "race has been used less than 470 Million times in the previous year, then you will know we are making progress.

As long as the USA's use of the word "race" remains around 441 MILLION times per year at Google, you'll know that Blacks are still being called sub-species pigs; we're still calling ourselves sub-human pigs, and the conflicts that comes from basing economic and social status on skin color are not abaiting.

Klick your heels together and say the word "race" one hundred times in rapid succession. Does it take you back to Kansas? Does it increase your wealth or improve the way you are treated by the police? Or does it just reaffirm and reassert color-based unjustices and unjust relationships that are hundreds of years old?

The word "race" is great for maintaining conflict and readership. But, using the word race is ultimately dehumanizing for Blacks because we participate in our own linguistic oppression, joining whites in a linguistic practice whose rules THEY designed so that THEY would always win.

If you keep on doing what you always did, you'll keep on getting what you always got.

On DavidHart's "PWB: Presiding While Black,"

In an article entitled "PWB: Presiding While Black," davidhart says over at Pam'sHouseBlend afrosphere blog that:

All the nonsense and feigned outrage over a speech given to school children by the President of the United States only crystallizes the idea that there are many people in this country who simply cannot cope with the fact that the black guy won. Barack Obama is the lawfully elected and sworn President of the United States of America. No amount of "birthers," "tenthers" or "tea-baggers" is going to change that. And for all of the assorted "ers" out there, I have worse news. Barack Obama will probably remain as President of the United States until January 20, 2017.

As I said in the comments to the article, I agree that the white right is inventing a lot of different arguments against Barack Obama because they simply don't like the color of his skin.

However, I do not think that calling them "racists" is productive. It's not that I think the word "racist" is to tough on them; it's that I think the word "racist" is too tough on us.

The linguistic "logic" behind the word "racism" is that whites are opposed to Obama because of his "race", and therefore their behavior is "racist."

The problem with this fallacy is that the Federal Government's Human Genome Project has announced that, as a matter of biology, "race" doesn't exist and it never did.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Program:

"DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other."

In other words, the Human Genome Project has proven that, as a matter of scientific fact, that which we call "race" does not exist as a matter of biology, and so all references to "race" are references to a fallacy. The word "racist" is a capitulation to the white supremacist fantasy that there is a biological "us" and "them" between people with white skin and people with brown skin.

To the degree that there is such an "us and them" political reality, the cleavage is delineated by skin color, which is observable and not "race", which is a specious and false theory about what's in our DNA.

In my opinion, the term "race" is a metasticized white supremacist fantacy concept that was born to support slavery and perpetuated to maintain Black subjugation, based on an "us and them" theory of "race".

You use the word "racist" because you think it stings white people more. White supremacists also like to perpetuate the use of the words "race" and "racial" and "racist" because these words support a crucial underlying premise of white supremacy: race.

Paulo Freire and Franz Fanon insisted that in order to end subjugation, we have to stop using langauge that subjugates us or that colludes in our subjugation. By calling others "racist" instead of "colorist" or color-aroused, you are perpetuating the language and oppressive biological fallacies of the oppressor. The concept of "race" and therefore also the concept of "racist" are examples of "internalizing the oppressor" language and concepts.