Are Some Chinese People Color-Aroused Against Brown Skin?

Blacks have been warning lately that China is inhospitable to Blacks. Some reported that Blacks were rounded up and beaten in advance of the coming Olympics, as part of an effort to make China prettier. A Washington Post article of today seems to confirm what others have been saying. According to the Washington Post:

Chen Juan, 27, a secretary in an English training school in Beijing, regularly uses skin-whitening products and carries an umbrella on summer days. "For me, the whiter, the better. Being white means pretty," she said. "If someone looks too black, I feel they look countrified and like a farmer. . . . Being white is prettier than being black."

"In my impression, black people, especially Africans, are not clean enough," Chen continued. "To be frank, I just feel black people are too black. Definitely, I wouldn't consider having a black guy as my boyfriend even if he were rich."

( . . . )

Some here say Obama's presidency is causing a major shift in attitudes. Others, however, say many Chinese rationalize his election as a fluke of the American system or suggest that Obama, whose mother was white, isn't "really" black.

"It will be really interesting to see what happens when he comes to visit, because I really think the Chinese have a hard time with it," said Hung. "Nobody has dealt with this question of what this means to our sense of race. It's a kind of self-examination that Chinese -- including myself -- need to go through. Are we racist?" WaPost

As opposed to asking, "are we racist," a question more easily answered in a manner that creates general agreement is the question, "Does Chen Juan's statement in the above quotation show evidence that she is aroused by skin color to experience ideation, emotion and engage in behavior based on the color that significantly impairs her in one or more areas of life?" Chen Juan says quite frankly that she experiences color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior. She says she would make significant decisions on the basis of color, even if these decisions limited her financial attainment.

As such, she has acknowledged that she really should be screened for Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder, which is an illness in which the perception of the skin color of oneself and/or others arouses ideation, emotion and behavior that causes significant impairment in one or more areas of life, including dating and marriage. The inability to marry someone who would otherwise be appropriate based on the skin color of oneself and the other is an impairment that, in some cases, may cause some people to live alone, not get married, not have children, fail to obtain financial goals which would otherwise be attainable ("I would not marry a wealthy Black man") and be therefore be generally unsatisfied with life based on a behavioral decision that was evoked by skin color aroused ideation and emotion. Although this does not happen in every case, extreme color-aroused disorder constitutes a mental illness in cases where color arousal it causes extreme impairment in one or more areas of life.

Chen Juan says that when she perceives people with brown or black skin, the ideation arises in her that the people are "countrified", which to her is negative. She feels emotional animus toward their skin color (and also toward her own skin color, prompting her to use whitening cream). She says her ideation includes the thought that the color "white is prettier than black." (Many in the United States will defend this ideation as a preference for what they know best, but that doesn't change the reality that skin color is the cue that evokes in such people a sense of revulsion or displeasure, which means that they are, to some degree, color-aroused.)

Chen Juan says that when she perceives, in particular, brown people from Africa, she experiences the ideation that they are "not clean enough." Regardless of whether African dark brown people are clean enough or not, Chen Juan is experiencing an ideation and revulsion that are aroused by the perception of the color of others.

The next crucial question is whether Chen Juan engages in behavior that is aroused by her color-aroused ideation and emotion. The behavioral aspect of color-aroused disorder is crucial since the desire to attack someone based on their skin color may not become a criminal case absent the inability or unwillingness to control the urge to attack someone based on their skin color. It is the color-aroused behavior, legal or illegal, that turns the underlying ideation and emotion into a cognitive behavioral challenge. Chen Jun acknowledges that she does engage in color-aroused behavior.

"I wouldn't consider having a black guy as my boyfriend even if he were rich."

Chen Juan "regularly uses skin-whitening products and carries an umbrella on summer days."

Chen Juan acknowledges that, upon perceiving her own and another's skin color could, she would make a decision about a potential romance with that person, on that basis alone, even where the color-aroused decision could negatively effect her economic status. She would refuse to marry a man whose skin were brown and would marry a lighter skinned man of lesser financial attainment, even if making the decision in this way led to a lower economic attainment for her.

Is Chen Juan racist?

Is Chen Juan "racist"? Whether her color-aroused ideation emotion and behavior include the anachronistic and unscientific belief that there are "sub-races" within the human species, and that these can be distinguished by their skin color (whether she is a "racist") is merely one of many ideational questions that would need to be explored in order for cognitive behavioral therapy to help her to confront the beliefs that guide her emotions and effect her behaviors, toward herself and others, in ways that could impair her self-esteem and functioning.

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. Francis L. Holland, The American Journal of Color Arousal

If Chen Juan rejected a potentially lucrative Black client, with color-aroused ideation and emotion leading to this color aroused self-destructive behavior, this would indicate that Extreme Color Aroused Disorder was impairing her functioning in a significant area of her life -her employment and financial prospects.

Likewise, if she remained unmarried and unsatisfied after rejecting marriage to a brown-skinned man based on ideation aroused by his skin color and hers, this would again indicate that Extreme Color Aroused Disorder was impairing her functioning in a significant area of her life - romantic relationships and marriage.

Most interesting in the case of Chen Juan is that she is acutely aware of her own skin color and does not like the skin color that she has. This is why Extreme Color Aroused Disorder is not merely a disorder of ideation aroused by others' skin color, but also a disorder of ideation, emotion and behavior aroused by one's own skin color. Chen Juan reports that, like the late Michael Jackson, she uses skin lightening creams, which means that her perception of color effects not only her reaction to others, but also her own sense of self-worth and "prettiness."

Aroused by ideation that brown skin is lowly, associating brown skin with various devalued societal characteristics, she dislikes her own skin almost as much as she dislikes the skin color of people browner than herself. This ideation and emotion leads her to engage in the color-aroused behavior of spending money, time and effort trying to lighten her own skin, as Michael Jackson did. As such, she should be evaluated for Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder (ECAD) because her ideation and emotion aroused by her own skin color are hurting her self-esteem. She needs to be screened and evaluated for Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder so that she can receive such help as she may need.

I urge readers with comments and additional observations to share them with us at the Francis L. Holland Blog, where the general public, of various skin colors, can benefit from our conversation.

4 comments::

kathy said...

I would guess that skin color itself in China is important, perhaps in the same way, or similar way that it is in Brazil. Because skin color ranges widely in Asia, from very light to very dark, and everything in between.
I think I did read somewhere that darker skin did seem to mean people who were farmers, but in big cities, there are people from everywhere, it seems.
If I remember correctly, China and other communist nations used the US treatment of Blacks as an example of how the US is evil, corrupt and a colonizer, I am pretty sure that this was promoted in China during the Vietnam War, so if anything, I would guess there is a lot of confusion.

The only thing I saw before the Olympics was where the poor housing was just getting, ahh, how do I describe this? Well, instead of tearing down the poor people's homes, they were just barricading them in so no one could see them or how they lived.

I really don't remember anything about Black people being in issue before the Olympics, but I am no expert.

I met a woman walking down the street in Chengdu, we did the eye flick thing I guess, I thought she was an American, but she was actually from France, she was there to study language, nobody even paid attention to us, although any person can be subject to staring or whatever, at least, that was my experience. Not to say that this article is wrong, but I do think it;s pretty complicated to figure out, at least, for me, anyways.

November 14, 2009 5:42 PM

Francis L. Holland Blog said...

Kathy, thanks for your observations based on personal experience. What's "the eye flick thing"?

November 14, 2009 6:14 PM

kathy said...

eye flick, well, i guess that is the flicker in our eyes, of recognition, in a sea of people, that we share something in common, we "recognize" each other, our eyes meet and we stop walking and start talking mid-sentence, "recognition" is the best I can come up with in english. oh, how else can i explain this?

November 14, 2009 7:18 PM

Francis L. Holland Blog said...

I was walking with a white-skinned friend in Providence, Rhode Island when I saw a Black man. I nodded to him and said, "What's up?" and then my friends and I continued walking.

My white friend asked me if I knew the Black man and I informed him that I didn't. But, effectively, we are all part of a club and we recognize each other partly by the color of each other's skin, and then by the nod of recognition.

People watching think that we must know each other, but we don't. We know only that we are part of the same international political group, determined for us and obligatorily accepted by us, determined by our skin color. Even in the midst of hundreds of whites, we know that we are not entirely alone, because we nod out of recognition and the one or a few other Black men (or women) present nod back.

November 14, 2009 10:58 PM

On the Diagnosis of Color Aroused Disorder

I think that what makes my analysis of skin-color-associated issues different is my willingness to be sufficiently dispassionate to analyze ideation, emotion and behavior according to an established criteria: does the complex of ideation, emotion and behavior, with respect to self and others, severely impair the subject in one or more important areas of life.

This analysis focuses attention on how ideation, emotion and behavior impair the functioning of the person who experiences these symptoms rather than on the effect that these symptoms have on others. As such, this approach is likely to anger or disturb people who believe that the harm they have suffered should be the focus of analytical attention.

However, cognitive behavioral therapy always focuses on how beliefs, emotions and behaviors affect the patient, and how these can be modified to enable the patient to be more functional, successful and happy. In the process, the patient needs to become aware of how his/her behavior effects others, but the ultimate purpose of this conscientization is not to make life happier for the victims of the person with Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder, but rather, as with the alcoholic, to help the persons with the disorder to the disorder to make their lives more functional and constructive.

The idea that minorities' suffering in the United States ought not be the exclusive focus of the study of "racism" is admittedly revolutionary, but the problem of color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior exists first and foremost in the minds of those persons who are aroused by the perception of skin color to have ideation, emotion and engage in behavior that that impairs their functioning, and such people, as we have seen, may be of any skin color. Blacks have sufficient influence over our own lives and those of our family and social network that we, too, can suffer Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder that, by definition, rises to the level where it severely effects our functioning in one or more areas of life, in interaction with other Blacks, with whites and within ourselves.

Analytically, the elements of Extreme Color Aroused Disorder are simple:

1. Ideation in an individual that is aroused by the perception or knowledge of one's own skin color and that or one or more others;
2. Emotion that is aroused by the perception of our own and/or others' skin color;
3. Behavior that is aroused by the ideation and emotion that we experience in reaction to our perception to the skin color of ourselves and others;
4. Severe impairment of the individual in one or more areas of life, arising out of the perception, ideation and emotion that arises in reaction to the skin color of others.

Therapy for Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder (ECAD) necessarily begins with screening and diagnosis of the disorder in individual patients. Therefore, the patient is necessarily the focus of the treatment.

For half a century, we have laboriously debated whether any particular act or person was "racist." The difficulty is that we have not had a definition of "racism" that achieved sufficient agreement among Blacks or between Blacks and other groups. And yet, as a result of the Human Genome Project's analysis of the entire human genome, we have learned that the best definition for racism is "the belief that members of the human species are divided into subspecies who can be identified by their skin color. It is possible to believe the above and not have a color-aroused disorder, if the belief in the existence of "races" does not lead to additional color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior that are dysfunctional.

It is also possible to know that, as a matter of science "race" does not exist and therefore to not be a "racist," while nonetheless experiencing mild, moderate and/or extreme ideation, emotion and behavior aroused by the skin-color cue which symptoms that, taken together, impair the individual and enable a psychiatrist to make a diagnosis of mild, moderate or extreme color-aroused disorder, depending upon the severity of the symptoms and the severity of the consequent impairment.

The value of this approach is that it enables professionals to make objective diagnosis based on observable symptoms, as well as signs, and points directly to the areas in which the patient needs to work in order to achieve a more functional life. This approach allows laymen to become more aware and to more intelligently evaluate their own and others' color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior, if only so that they can seek help for themselves and their loved ones as the need becomes apparent.

The opinion or conclusion that someone has "racism" or "is a 'racist'" almost never leads to meaningful psychiatric treatment, even in those cases where it leads to very public interventions. As such, at least in terms of its usefulness for cognitive behavioral screening, diagnosis and treatment, the concept of "racism" is, at best, useless and, at worst, confuses people and discourages them from seeking treatment for an illness which is otherwise more easily diagnosed and treated based on the patient's ideation, emotion and behavior, and an increasing awareness of and reluctance to accept the consequent impairments.

To confirm the above, one need only ask psychiatrists how many of their patients report that their "racism" has caused them to seek psychiatric help. Do any of my readers know anyone who has ever sought psychiatric help because of their fear that they were "a racist"?

Is "Race" More Important than "Skin Color"?

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Blogger Francis L. Holland Blog said...(at The Desultory Life of a Public Citizen blog),

The biggest "struggle with race" is the struggle for Americans to acknowledge that "race" does not exist and it never did. The concept is just a mental redlining of our minds, the way whites' banks redlined "do not loan" neighborhoods wherever Blacks were predominant. The biological concept of "race" is a tool to keep the "races" segregated, and to naturally assure that Blacks received the short end of the segregation stick.

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.

Blacks and whites use the term and fallacious concept "race" ubiquitously in our publications. Does this mean that the concept benefits the oppressed as much as it benefits the oppressor? Does ANY social construct benefit the oppressed as much as it benefits the oppressor?

I think we have to decide who has benefitted and continues to benefit more front Americans' belief in the existence of "race" - whites or Blacks. Once we have come to a new level of consciousness that the concept of "race" was not invented by whites to help Blacks achieve liberation theologies, then we can make a conscious decision about whether we want to perpetuate believe in something that has been, as a matter of science, wholly disproven.

Look at it this way: Is there any reason why a scientific hypothesis whose existence has been disproven by modern science should still structure our debates about skin color and skin-color-related politics, culture and sociology?

If you begin to use the terms "skin color" and "skin color groups", you begin to see that the word "race" is superfluous at best and represents a fundamental miseducation of the populous - Black and white - in reality.

The Francis L. Holland Blog

November 2, 2009 3:02 PM
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Blogger Francis L. Holland Blog said...

When whites invented the concept of "race" they hoped it would perpetuate slavery and they knew this concept would tie our minds in intellectual knots for centuries to come.

So far, they have succeeded. Just Google the word "race" (even while excluding usages that could refer to bike races and ball bearings) and you discover that the term "race" has been used 448 million times in the United States in the last year alone. That's a lot of usage for a scientific concept that has no basis in science.

If, instead, you search for the phrase "skin color", you'll discover that it has only been used 4 million times in the United States in the last year. The concept of "race" is used more than one hundred times more often to describe "skin color" than the simple visible fact of skin color is.

What this means is that we are more willing to believe in a hypothesis about the relationship between skin color and DNA ("race") for which there is "no evidence" than we are willing to believe in and study the sociological, cultural, economic and political importance of "skin color", which is something that we can see with our own eyes!

In the words of Spike Lee, we have been bamboozled. All of us.

I'm in Brazil, and I'm not Coming Back to the USA!

Rippa, at The Intersection of Madness and Reality AfroSpear blog, asked me to write a guest post about my experiences in Brazil, and this is what I wrote:

Monday, October 26, 2009

(Editor's Note: The following post comes from Francis L. Holland. A fellow Afrospear member who blogs over at The Francis L. Holland Blog as well as an assortment of great sites.Checkout how he breaks it down as he attempts to broaden your world view a bit.)

People here in Bahia, Brazil often ask me why I’ve come to live in a “Third World” country when I could live in the United States, where I was born, educated, and practiced law. I guess the simplest way to explain it is in terms of what drove me away, how I got to Brazil, and what makes me stay here.

When I lived in the United States, I was so depressed that I didn’t want to live anymore, even though I was becoming increasingly more recognized among immigration lawyers and non-profit program managers, was earning a good salary and drove a new car . . . I felt empty and lonely inside and didn’t want to be alive any more. I sought psychiatric help, but often the biggest barrier to care was the cheap-ass American insurance companies I had, even as a managing attorney in a large corporation. My doctors had to lie and say I was suicidal, even during weeks when I was feeling better, in order for my care to be covered.

Instead of just ending it all, I decided to do something equally dramatic. I enrolled in a USA university’s French language program and applied to learn French on the French Riviera, while living off student loans. In France, all of my medical care for my psychiatric illness was 100% covered by my French government insurance, which cost me about three hundred dollars a year. The Government also paid 30% of my apartment rent, because I was a student. I began to see more and more that the USA just isn’t “the best country in the world”, compared to what many other countries offer to their citizens and even to foreign students..

After 30 months in France, I was getting along quite well in French and was even enrolled in a doctoral program for international law. I had a doctoral thesis project and had passed a number of law courses taught entirely in French. Once again, though, I came to feel empty and purposeless in spite of the doctoral program, university friends, and an apartment near the beach. The depression and suicidal thoughts came back like a flock of locusts that won’t leave even after the fields have been picked dry.

One negative thing about my personality is that as soon as I learn to do something competently, then I don’t want to do it anymore. I constantly need new challenges, if only because confronting them distracts me from inner loneliness and emptiness. I couldn’t feel happy anymore in France. By 2003, with the Bush Administration’s ballooning war deficit devaluing the US dollar overseas, I just couldn’t afford to live in there anymore, and I thought that I had seen all that I would see there.

So, I researched countries where the US dollar was more valuable and took a bus to Krakov, Poland, where I contracted for an apartment much less expensive than the one in France, and returned to France to gather my things. (I was one of only three Black people I saw during a week in Poland, but I thought I could handle that.)

It was at this point that an Italian friend returned to France from a vacation in Brazil, accompanied by the most beautiful and enchanting young Portuguese-speaking girlfriend imaginable. Together they convinced me that I would be much happier in Brazil, where there is great Afro-Brazilian food, Samba, Pagode and Axé music and dance, Afro-Brazilian culture and heritage, and a uniquely Brazilian martial arts form called, Capoeira. The dollar went a long way, they assured me.

They convinced me that I would surely find the woman of my dreams in Brazil and begin a family, even with financial resources that in France were laughable. (A Coca Cola at a beach restaurant in Brazil costs one dollar, but it costs seven dollars in France, not including the fifteen dollar French charge just for occupying a beach chair.)

After some Internet research, I decided to give Brazil a chance. I sold everything I had (car, kayaks, law books, tools, stove and dishwasher) and was able to buy a ticket to Brazil, with two hundred dollars to spare. I couldn’t afford to travel for a mere visit to Brazil, while continuing to pay rent and monthly expenses in France. So, I had to jump into Brazil with both feet or not at all.

Brazil, I discovered, is a country of 200 million people, so large that it “occupies nearly half of South America” and is and is the fourth most populous democracy in the world. With a hundred million Black and brown people, (1/2 the population) Brazil has the largest Black presence outside of Africa itself, including:

7.4% classifying themselves as preto (black skin color) and 42.3% as pardo (brown color). The latter classification is broad and encompasses Brazilians of mixed ancestry. A caboclo is a term used in Brazil describing a person of mixed Indigenous peoples in Brazil and White people descent. In Brazil, a caboclo is a specific type of mestizos . . . making the total 49.5%. The largest concentration of Afro-Brazilians is in the state of Bahia where over 80% of the people are descendants of Africans. Absolute Astronomy

If you have never been to a part of the world where Black people and our culture are in the majority, it’s hard even to imagine how freeing it is. It’s wonderful to walk into a store or restaurant and not have anyone wondering, “What is HE doing here,” because most of the people are Black and there is nothing remarkable about your skin color. It’s wonderful to have all commerce stop for a week in February for Carnival, which is an intense national multicultural celebration of Black culture.

When I arrived in Brazil, a childhood friend who is now a psychiatrist diagnosed my mental illness as “post-traumatic slavery syndrome,” exacerbated by the constant pressure of being Black in the USA. Like a burn victim who can’t recover until he gets out of the fire, I couldn’t begin to recover from living in United States until I was living somewhere else. I thought he was crazy, but it makes sense to me now.

In Bahia, where 80% of the population is Afro-descendant, the official culture is Afro-Brazilian, with Afro-Brazilian dance and music daily featured on television, and real discussions occurring about what this culture means and how it evolved, and how it is a force for growth now and in our future. Here, Afro-Brazilian music and beats play on the streets, in beachside restaurants, in clubs . . . virtually everywhere.

Lunches and dinners of black beans and rice, okra and sweet pumpkin, fried fish, grits and jambalaya would make many Black Americans feel more at home here than in my native Massachusetts. And the variety of fruits here is simply amazing.

Brazil still has obvious skin-color aroused problems, but it also has laws to protect Blacks from the worst affronts to our dignity. Article 3, Sections XLI and XLII of the Brazilian Constitution say:

The Law will punish all discrimination against fundamental rights and liberties. [including the fundamental right not to be subject to discrimination.] The practice of racism constitutes a crime not subject to bail, and subject to imprisonment, according to the terms of the law.

In Brazil, whites have no First-Amendment “right” to call Blacks “monkeys” or the “N” word, or to insist that we are genetically inferior. Instead, that sort of behavior elicits the virtual guarantee a swift arrest, particularly when there are witnesses or other convincing evidence that the law against “racism” has been violated.

(Compare that to my experience walking with a white woman in Providence, Rhode Island, and having two white men scream from a pickup truck, “What are you doing walking with that “N” word?!” In the United States, I had no legal recourse; those whites had a Constitutional right to say that to us, which makes me strongly question the “wisdom” and intent of the Foundering Fathers.)

In this part of Brazil, it is so common to see multi-colored groups of tourists and bi-chromatic couples that the term “interracial” doesn’t even make sense here. At least 50% of the population has “interracial” ancestry and comes from a polychromatic family. So, to see a beige and a brown person together and call them “interracial” is like saying San Francisco and Los Angelos are interstate cities. With so many white-skinned Brazilians who have one Black parent and a Black cousin, the strict belief in “race” doesn’t carry the weight that it does in the United States. My kids say its “racist” to consider differences in skin color when deciding whom to date and marry.

The relationship between Blacks and police is different in much of Brazil as well. In the US, we Blacks immediately sense trouble when we see police officers, regardless of their skin color. When whites say, “The police are your friends,” we just roll our eyes in disgust. In Brazil, both the death penalty and life imprisonment are unconstitutional.

In the state of Bahia, by contrast, the majority of police officers are Black, and they walk among the rest of us like neighbors and friends, rather than like the occupying force they are in our United States communities. For example, there are four SWAT-like police officers who live in our condominium complex and all are Black. They carry machine guns and automatic weapons, but we are not their targets. They are our neighbors – not beasts of prey who travel to the inner-city from their suburban homes each day.

It took me probably a year in Brazil to stop automatically fearing police, but now I see Brazilian police as citizens, like members of any other profession. Young and handsome Black men and women. I have a close friend who is graduating from the police academy, sponsored by another mutual friend of ours. In Brazil, I don’t feel like, as a Black man, I am being hunted, targeted and under siege anymore.

Blacks are better integrated into Brazil’s voting population, and voting is far easier here than it is in the United States. In fact, it’s a requirement that Brazilian citizens vote, or explain why they were unable to do so. Therefore Brazilian politicians have to spend their efforts convincing the electorate, rather than manipulating and discouraging Black turnout on Election Day.

The poor seem as likely to vote as the rich, and the Blacks as likely as whites, which is a fact manifested in the election of President Lula Ignacio Lula da Silva, who once lost a finger when he was a machinist; who went on to lead the machinists’ union; and then won the presidency on his third candidacy. If Lula has his way, the next president of Brazil will be the first woman president, and will continue Lula’s social policies, including free medical care for all, and designated seats for Blacks and the poor at the nation’s universities.

I’m not as lonely here. In 2005, I married an Afro-Brazilian woman, and I have three adolescent step-children, God help me. I’ve shared with my wife my and my family’s experiences with color-arousal in the United States, but my wife asks me not to tell her the news I report in my Police Brutality Blog and Electrocuted While Black blog. She says hearing those accounts just leaves her angry and disgusted.

As someone who suffers from chronic depression, readily accessible medical care and medication are essential to me. In Brazil there is a national government system of hospitals, clinics and pharmacies that provide free medical care regardless of who you are (Brazilian or foreigner) and without inquiring about income, social status, or requesting payment of any kind.

If you have a serious car accident in Brazil with multiple injuries, you can be treated at a Government hospital without any insurance and without receiving a bill afterward. Health workers even visit patient’s homes to remind them of appointments.

Because I struggle with depression, I need to see a psychiatrist at least every two months for a fresh medication prescription. Unlike the United States, where there were co-pays and limits on treatment visits, and where I had to pay for medications out-of-pocket, the doctors at the neighborhood clinics here see me here for free, and I receive the medications I need for free at the same government clinics. Nonetheless, because of poverty and its attendant risk factors, Brazil’s overall infant mortality rate is almost four times higher than that of the United States. And abortion is illegal.

Many Brazilians idealize the USA, mostly because they’ve never had to actually live there. They would never imagine that USA for-profit hospitals secretly dump uninsured patients on the streets in front of homeless shelters. They couldn’t imagine waiting six weeks to see a dentist or paying a thousand dollars for a root canal, since dentists here have walk-in availability and charge only $150.00 for a root canal.

Instead of paying through the nose in the United States for dental care, it’s often cheaper to fly to Brazil, have a dental vacation, and return home with money to spare. Brazilians couldn’t even imagine going to the emergency room for a broken arm and getting a five thousands dollars invoice afterward. Invoices and credit card swipers don’t exist in Brazil’s national health care system.

There’s something about the dignity and creativity of Brazilians that impresses me: Poor Black people have far more autonomy in Bahia than in the United States. Many Blacks who would be suffering unemployment in the US with their level of education are instead running their own businesses in Bahia, selling and fixing bicycles, motorcycles and cars, owning restaurants, bed and breakfasts and Internet cafés, making and selling art works from jewelry to African-inspired clothing and sculptures . . .

The imagination and self-determination of Afro-Brazilians makes me proud to have brown skin, when I see us selling fresh coconut water, carving human heads from coconuts, and using dried coconut shells to make and sell colorful necklaces and earrings. Instead of sound trucks, humble Brazilians have massive sound systems mounted on bicycles. They advertise their clients’ wares and effectively have their own businesses.

Even though I lived in the US for 37 years and in Brazil for only five, I know far more self-employed Blacks here than I did in the United States. In Bahia, there are fewer rules and less regulation to prevent a person from starting a business in his home or on the street.

Brazil reminds me of my African roots. If you want to “Free Your African Hair”, there are self-employed men and women who work at booths or stools in the streets of Bahia, waiting to braid your hair for twenty dollars or less. They also braid white tourists’ hair.

Yes, Brazil has its problems. Basic sanitation like sewers and running water are lacking in the poorest neighborhoods of many cities, and criminals parade with impunity. Public education is sometimes as lousy and precarious as it is in US cities, and many young people who can’t find jobs turn to selling drugs instead, with the attendant murders and other crimes.

The murder rate is four times higher in Brazil than in the US, according to the US State Department, with heavily armed drug cartels battling each other and often defeating police on the streets of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. These cartels burn buses (after emptying them) and destroy the police’s armored cars and helicopters with high-powered rifles and grenades. Innocent Brazilians die daily when they’re caught in the crossfire.

Just as the rich in the USA help themselves to public monies through the military-industrial complex, and prison industry, much of Brazilian state and national budgets is lost to embezzlement by government officials and their associates. Hundreds of millions of dollars just disappear while local mayors literally build castles for themselves and fly about in helicopters, taking their families to Europe on their Government expense accounts. But Brazil is not at war with any country, and the rich steal peacefully – not by starting wars of imperialism.

Brazil is a lot of fun and Carnival is coming. If you visit Brazil, here are a few tips:

If you come to Brazil, bring a little extra money and get all of your root canals and crowns done in a week or two, for 20% of what it would cost in the United States.


Most stories of tourists losing their passports and money start with the phrase, “I was just having a few beers . . .” When you’re navigating a new culture and language it’s better to do so sober, like flying a plane.


In Brazil, drug dealers will sell you baking soda as blow, and then kill you if you are foolish enough to return and complain.


Prostitutes may well drug you and then take all of your money. Thieves and com men target foreigners who look, dress and act like wealthy tourists, so stop at a cheap clothing store and dress yourself up like the humble Brazilians you see on the street. If strangers call out to you, “amigo” or “Americano”, it’s best to get the hell away from them as quickly as possible. They know what (they think) you have, and they want it.

What still needs a world of work here is national television. There is one television show with twenty women dancing behind the host, and sometimes only one of the twenty is has brown skin. An advertisement for the new Salvador Shopping Mall in the capital of this 80% Black state has over fifty photos of models as shoppers, but none of the shoppers are Black. How does that happen in a country that is half Black?

"The Low Cost of Being Racist (sic)"

In an article entitled "The Low Cost of Being Racist", by Karnythia at the blog, "The Angry Black Woman: Race, Politics, Gender, Sexuality, Anger" blog points to a case in Taos, New Mexico as an example of "racism". A white man bought a hotel in this mostly Latino town and then told Latino workers that their names had to be anglicized, and could no longer be pronounced as would be appropriate in their native language, and as they had been called all their lives, at work and at home.

According to Yahoo News,

The tough-talking former Marine immediately laid down some new rules. Among them, he forbade the Hispanic workers at the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel from speaking Spanish in his presence (he thought they'd be talking about him), and ordered some to Anglicize their names.

No more Martin (Mahr-TEEN). It was plain-old Martin. No more Marcos. Now it would be Mark.

Whitten's management style had worked for him as he's turned around other distressed hotels he bought in recent years across the country.

The 63-year-old Texan, however, wasn't prepared for what followed. Yahoo News.

Although I understand Karnythia's concern with "racism", there is a fundamental futility in calling people and their behavior "racist":

New Mexico's anti-discrimination law does not use the word "racist" and does not forbid being a "racist". Instead, the anti-discrimination statute forbids acts and practices based on race . . . color . . . national origin . . . ancestry . . .

28-1-7. Unlawful discriminatory practice.

It is an unlawful discriminatory practice for: A. an employer, unless based on a bona fide occupational qualification or other statutory prohibition, to refuse to hire, to discharge, to promote or demote or to discriminate in matters of compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment against any person otherwise qualified because of race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, physical or mental handicap or serious medical condition, or, if the employer has fifty or more employees, spousal affiliation; provided, however, that 29 U.S.C. Section 631(c)(1) and (2) shall apply to discrimination based on age; or, if the employer has fifteen or more employees, to discriminate against an employee based upon the employee's sexual orientation or gender identity;

Since the employee's names are virtually inseparable from their "national origin" and "ancestry," to oblige Hispanics to anglicize and stop using their given names seems a like discrimination to me. And I believe I have read some caselaw to that effect although I don't remember the citations.

So, is Whitten "racist"? What difference does it make, if our laws do not provide for treatment or punishment for being racist? Like diagnosing someone with "bipolar disorder" and "schizophrenia", "racist" is a diagnosis that cannot be proved based on one act of illegal color-aroused discrimination. As with alcoholism, you need a case history, access to medical records, discussion with family . . . No one should be psychiatrically diagnosed, e.g. an "alcoholic" on the basis on one night of drinking.

Does that mean they should not be punished for their behavior? Absolutely not! If drivers drives drunk, then they can should be penalized not because they are alcoholics, a determination which is more in the realm of medicine that law, and which determination would require expert testimony and weeks of testimony. No, they should be punished not for what they are, but for what they did. The should be punished because they drove drunk, which is a determination that does not require expert testimony.

Laws typically prohibit what people do, not what they are. Even laws that declare someone to be a sex offender based the sex-offender characterization on on individual convictions, based on proven sex offenses. Statutes specify exactly what behavior leads to a determination that a convict is a sex offender.

Is anyone aware of a law under which three acts of discrimination qualify the offender as a "racist"? That doesn't exist, and I don't think it will anytime soon, if only because "racist" is a psyhchiatric determination rather than a legal one.

There is a fundamentally distinction between proving what someone is and what someone has done. A law professor once told me to be careful not to exaggerate my own "burden of proof." Don't say, for example, "The prosecution will prove that Mr. Rapist is the most hideous rapist in the state." Don't say that to the jury because even if the jury find that Mr. Rapist has commited one act of rape, that same jury might use the burden of proof that you suggested - "most hideous rapist" - and find that there is reasonable doubt on the question of "most hideous". That would be a shame since "most hideous" is not a criteria necessary for a rape conviction.

Back to Larry Whitten, the hotel owner. If we propose to prove that Whitten should be punished by the Government because he is a "racist," then we will fail because:

(a) Being a "racist" is not against the law, and

(b) Even if being a "racist" were against the law, you would need expert testimony from psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists and even linguists to prove that Whitten is a racist. Aren't discrimination cases hard enough already without assuming this immensely higher burden of proof?

When we assume that we have to prove that someone "is a racist" in order for anything to be done about their behavior, we effectively increase our own burden of proof from:

(a) proving what they have done, to

(b) proving what they are in their essence.

Many of us cannot describe ourselves cogently, much less convince an all-white judge or jury that one or three or five actions of discrimination. That's a determination that a legislature would have to make by legislating the number and kind of acts which, once proven, make a person a "racist."

Here's an analogy: to convict someone of shoplifting, do you have to prove that they have a long-established tendency to steal from stores, or is it enough to show that they stole from one store one time? Should we change the law to increase the burden of proof, requiring the state to prove that the defendant is a shoplifter. If so, how many instances of shoplifting must the prosecutor compile, and what additional psychiatric information would be required before the state can arrest someone for being a thief?

Must a prosecutor prove that the person who raped a woman is a rapist, or only that he raped someone on one occasion? Is it unfair to punish someone for "just one rape"? Shouldn't we wait unti the have committed a series of rapes, and until there is a consensus among the talk show hosts, before we put them in jail, having determined that all of their rapes together prove that they are a rapist? Is so, then every man can commit one or two rapes with impunity, because one or two rapes, without more, don't prove that he is a rapist.

What we're really talking about is whether someone has to be proved to be a serial rapist before they can be charged and convicted of one rape? And whether someone has to be a serial violator of anti-discrimation laws before the can be charged with discrimination. After arguing over the definition of "racist" for half a century, it should be obvious to us that it is much easier to prove what someone has done on a particular day, with witnesses present, than it is to prove what someone is.

The problem with calling people "racist" is that "racist" is a high bar to clear, and requires a strong burden of proof on the person making the accusation. It's fair to ask, how can you tell from this one circumstance that the person's manner of interacting with Latinos is consistently and chronically antagonistic based on the "race" of the victim?

The truth is, it really doesn't matter whether Larry Whitten is a "racist" or not. It seems likely to me that under New Mexico's anti-discrimination law, Whitten would be found to have engaged in unlawful discrimination in this instance, because he forbids people to use the names that inherently identify them with their color, national origin and ancestry. Just stating that rule, orally or in writing, is sufficient at least to file a claim under the anti-discrimination, because to fail to file a claim will mean acquisence to a long series of violations of the statute.

Here's an analogy: Your child takes ten dollars out of your pocketbook to buy candy. You say he is a thief and must be punished. He retorts, "I have stolen in this once instance, but that doesn't prove that I steal all the time, in the past and into the future. I am guilty of one act of theft, but that is not enough for me to deserve a spanking. You must prove that I am a thief.

According to Merriam Websters Online Dictionary:

Main Entry: thief

Pronunciation: \ˈthēf\

Function: noun

Inflected Form(s): plural thieves \ˈthēvz\

Etymology: Middle English theef, from Old English thēof; akin to Old High German diob thief

Date: before 12th century

: one that steals especially stealthily or secretly; also : one who commits theft or larceny

So, your child argues that he has stolen once, but that does not prove that he is "one who steals" habitually. And so he isn't a thief and cannot be punished for one mere act of theft.

And so you say to your child, "You are right." I don't have enough information to determine that you have dedicated your life to an unyielding pattern of thievery. So I agree that it would be unfair to punish you for stealing $10.00 from me. I agree to wait until you have stolen so many times that you meet the definition of "one who steals" rather than the lower burden of proof of "one who has stolen."

Now, your child has you beaten. There is no one anywhere who can specify the number of times and quantity of money stolen necessary to prove, to everyone's satisfaction, that your child is a thief. That's why the law against theft focuses on what the defendant has done, rather than on what he is as a person.

Remember: we do not need to prove that someone is a rapist; we only need to prove that they comitted ONE act of rape. Likewise, we do not have to prove that Larry Whitten is a racist and doing so would have no legal effect even if it were possible. We only need to prove that he committed one or more unlawful acts of discrimination.

It is not illegal to be a "racist", even in Brazil where there is a law that specifically forbids acts of racism. The law forbids acts, not vaguel or completely undefined existential states. This is why we need to stop calling people "racists", setting a high evidentiary bar that we can never clear. We need to show how individual acts and patterns of acts constitute violations of anti-discrimination laws. If those laws do not forbid the acts that most offend us, then we need new laws. But, we'll never get a law that punishes people for what they are rather than for what they do.

First we discover from conclusive mapping of the entire human genome that "race" does not exist in any way that can be identified by science. Then we elect a president whose skin-color is a mixture of that of his white mother and his African father, and whose "race" can only be determined with reference to the "one drop" rule: Anyone with a drop of Black DNA (that is visible to the human eye) belongs to the black "race".

Now, we discover at the Root Magazine that Michelle Obama has a great-great-great grandaddy who was white, which make Michelle herself biologically a member of white white family whom she never knew, as well as a member of the Black family in which she was raised:

First Lady Michelle Obama’s maternal third-great-grandfather was a white man who fathered Melvinia Shields’ (her maternal third great-grandmother) son, Dolphus T. Shields, both slaves. This discovery, like all recoveries of the identities of ancestors we thought had been obliterated in the crucible of slavery, is first and foremost a welcome gift for the first family, especially for Michelle’s mother, Marian Shields Robinson, and the Shields family line. And for anyone still naïve enough to believe in the myth of racial purity, it is one more corroboration that the social categories of “white” and “black” are and always have been more porous than can be imagined, especially in that nether world called slavery. Read it all at The Root.

So we can only conclude that Michelle is exclusively of the "black race" if we do so on the utterly unscientific basis of the slavery-era social norm that anyone known to have even a drop of Black blood was to be considered Black, and therefore subject to the master's ownership and the country's strict laws determining the subjugated status of Blacks.

We know that all of this is arbitrary, capricious and socially constructed, e.g. to insist that I am all genetically Black while my mother was white and my father was Black. In fact genetic evidence would show a strong relationship to both parents. The child of a Black man and white woman is neither all black nor all-white as a matter of science. We only insist on strict delineations because Blacks, as a minority, cannot afford to lose a single member of our army, while whites' socio-political hegemony is based on the utterly absurd belief that they are a genetic race unto themselves, with superhuman and superior-to-Black characterstics in every conceivable way.

We know that we could just as easily say that Michelle Obama is "white", since she has one drop of white blood. Either "one drop"rule is a rule of law confounded by science, a conclusion that is the antithesis of empirical science.

Nonetheless, we American will wake up in the morning and see Black and white people in the mirror, even though reference to a color chart will show that we are brown or beige, and reference to a history will show that we are just as much biological members of white families as we are members of Black ones.

At some point, the documented discoveries of historians and the genetic analyses of the medical field will compel us to accept that the "color line" in the United States is no more genetically based than the redlining of Black neighborhoods is created and compelled the movement of tectonic plates. With all of this knew knowledge, we've all got a lot on our plates, and we're all "chewing"on color-aroused ideation, deciding whether to believe in scientific and historical facts or white supremacist-origin social structures whose purpose was to define and delineate the boundaries of Blacks' aspirations in America and the near boundlessness of our servitude.

Can "Racism" Have Caused Chris Brown to Beat His Black Girlfriend's Face to a Pulp?

I can't believe that Michael Vick went to jail for beating his dogs, but Chris Brown can beat his (Black) girlfriend senseless and live on as a free man. (I'm not advocating that Chris Brown go to jail or that he go freee, but I'm pointing out the irony.)

Field Negro is right that whites and the white (in)justice system value dogs, regardless of their color, much more than they value and protect Black women. They value and protect a Black man's dog more than they value and protect a Black man's Black girlfriend.

Chris Brown was wise not to beat a white and blond singer senseless, or he'd be serving 20 years to life in jail for attempted murder. He'd have been treated like a serial ax murderer / rapist if he had beaten a white and blond woman like that.

So, can a Black man be "racist" against a Black woman by preferentially beating up that Black woman based on his correct belief that the legal consequences of beating up a Black woman will be less than the legal consequences of beating up a white woman? No, a Black man cannot beat up a Black woman on the basis of her "race" because "race" does not exist:

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.

And if anyone wants to drag in all of that ideological sociological bullshit about "race" existing as a social construct, then we would have to conclude that . . . Chris Brown is not "racist" to choose beat up a Black woman instead of a white woman. Chris Brown, according to the pantheons and canons of "racism", because Chris Brown, as a Black man, doesn't have the social power necessary to beat his Black girlfriend senseless.

Except Chris Brown obviously DOES have the power to beat his Black girlfriend senseless, and the power comes in part from the knowledge that the white criminal justice system will not treat him as brutally and mercilessly as it would if his victim were white. So, Chris Brown chooses his victims based on their skin color, but he's not "racist", because "racism" doesn't exist. Racism cannot logically exist because "race" itself does not exist.

Let me harmonize all of ideological madness for everyone by speaking about skin color that DOES exist instead of "race" that doesn't: Chris Brown has the color-aroused ideation that he will not be harshly punished for beating up a Black woman. This ideation is based on four hundred years of history in the United States of America. Black men are not allowed to beat up famous white female singers and live to tell about it.

So, Chris Brown chose his victim based on skin-color-associated ideation and his knowledge of how skin-color-based (in)justice works in the United States of America.
He chose his victim based not on "race", which doesn't exist, but based on skin color, which DOES exist. Anyone want to argue whether skin color exists or not?

Instead of asking the "chicken and egg," "tree falls in the forest" question of whether Blacks can be "racist" against Blacks, which is like asking whether helium weighs more than oxygen underwater, why don't we simplify our terms and ask whether Chris Brown can choose to beat up his girl friend based on the knowledge that the criminal justice system won't treat him as harshly as it would if his girlfriend where white. The answer to that question is obvious, even to ten year olds. He wouldn't DARE leave a famous white woman singer's face looking like that!

I think it's pretty obvious why Black men don't go around beating famous white women's faces to a black and blue pulp: Black men don't want to spend the rest of their lives in jail for one night's angry outburst against a white victim who is more highly valued by white juries, prosecutors, judges and police. This is not "racism" but it is color-based decision-making, which is something that people of any skin color are capable of.

Would O.J. Simpson's case have become two-year-long national cause celêbre if he had been suspected of cutting a Black woman's throat? Of course not! With the "evidence" they had, they probably wouldn't even have bothered to arrest him!

Ideation based on skin color is why Black people kill Black people more than they kill white people. We know that killing Black people is socially acceptable while killing white people is stupid, because it much more often leads to the electric chair.

Color-based justice in the police departments, district attorney's offices, courts and juries leads to color-based decision-making on the part of Blacks and whites alike. Why steal a white refrigerator and get the death penalty, when you can steal a Black refrigerator of equal cost and quality and get two years' probation?

That analysis is not based on "race" and "racism" (the non-existence of the former having precluded the existence of the latter) and it's doesn't require knowing whether barium weighs more than oxygen. It's simply color-aroused decision-making based on predictable color-aroused consequences.

Forget "racism" theory and ideology and witch doctory, and let's discuss skin color-based decision making. Chris Brown is not in jail today because he made the logical but morally reprehensible color-based decision to beat up a famous Black woman singer instead of a famous white woman singer.

Kanje West took a medal out of a white woman's hand during a Grammy ceremony (or Emmy or Nobel?), without physically harming the white woman at all (except with respect to her legal right not to be unconsentually touched, even indirectly) and this became became national news. Chris Brown's brutality toward his girlfriend also became national news, but he was not seriously punished because he beat up a Black woman instead of a white woman. He showed an very keen understanding of the skin color-based (in)justice system for which the United States of America is notorious.