Extreme Color Arousal

I want to draw your attention to an excellent post at the Francis L. Holland Blog.

Mr. Holland has written about “extreme color arousal”, and draws from his own personal experience in a way that is both enlightening and refreshing.

Having blogged about some of my own personal experiences in this particular arena, I found this piece to be an interesting look at a subject that we Southerners sometimes confront, and sometimes avoid, but never ignore, nor should we, I think. Here is an excerpt:

Some people will conclude that because I am color-aroused, I am “racist.” If so, they will have missed the entire point of this discussion. Unfortunately, some people will miss the entire point here and so they will learn nothing at all, even if the read all of the words I have written. Particularly with respect to matters involving skin-color, such people show an overwhelming preference for simplicity, even to the extent of being unable to learn anything new at all. Their preference for simplicity in “calling-out” the perpetrators of “racism” actually mirrors the simplistic stereotypical thinking of the “racists” themselves.

In fact, the stereotypical and simplistic thinking of symptomatic of color-arousal often affects both those who are perpetrators of “racism” and those who say they vehemently oppose it. Their simplistic and reductive thinking itself is a symptom of color-aroused ideation, and this reductionism is almost inevitably manifested in their emotions and behavior.

When people say “you’re a racist,” they are demonstrating the preference for simplicity that mirrors the stereotypical thinking of the racist (“all Blacks or whites or Asians bad”). There is nothing simple at all about human ideation, emotion and behavior. It is inevitably complex, depending as it does upon personal history, learned thoughts and behavior, personal choice, present environment, circumstances, stress, etc.

Read it all.

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