It's All a Matter of Hatred
by G. G., New City, NY
I remember laughing heartily when Mrs. Fallan wrote, "I bet you can't see this, Eric" on the blackboard (greenboard) with red chalk in my freshman biology class two years ago. She was right: Eric was colorblind. I guess it was rude, but what an experiment!
I remember privately asking Eric about the colors he could not see. "What do green and red look like to you?"
He responded that they were both a strange mixture of brown and gray. "But that, of course, depends on what you perceive brown and gray to look like." And then it came to me.
People could see purple, for example, as different colors but call it by the same name because they've never truly been able to see through the eyes of others. Mike could look at purple and see blue. His lab partner Brian would see yellow. Leslie would see orange. They'd all call it purple though, and never know that their perceptions of purple are different.
I had always thought it strange that my friend Rob would love to know how the world would be different if the "golden" arches of McDonald's were blue (Little does he know that, to me, the arches are blue). But he's got a point. Color is very influential.
What if Joe McCarthy's perception of red were actually green? We'll never know. I once wondered if transplanting his eyes and receptor color cells in his brain would have made a difference.
So I tried this on two people I knew to be racists. Scott was white and hoped that David Duke would be our next President. John was black and liked Malcolm X best in his early days.
After the procedure they were both confused. I said, "See, should color make any difference in your thoughts of people?"
Examining himself, Scott said, "No, it's your smart little white attitude that ticks me off."
Following suit, John said, "I don't care about your color. I just hate dumb niggers." Then they killed me. So, when looking for complicated answers to simple questions, I can no longer be of much help. That shouldn't be a problem though. Mrs. Fallan still teaches biology.