Whether slightly, lightly, moderately or highly melanated, our melanin causes others to see our phenotypic Brown and tanned hue as Black; and they associate Black with African and Africa. However, color is a mere reflection or lack of reflection. Our humanity is in the DNA, the genes, not in what we see. Color, is just a visual illusion, a mind trick.
More specifically, color is a perception, an appearance, an impression. White is defined as the absence of color and what we see as white, is the result of the reflection of all light without the absorption of it. Black, on the other hand, is defined as the absence of light. Thus, what we see as Black, is actually the result of the absorption of all light. Let that simmer in your mind for a bit. Reflect upon this.
Having been in close nexus with a neuro-ophthalmologist for 9 years, attending conferences while the other ladies attended to shopping and spas, taught me a thing or 2 about how the eyes function to allow sight. Additionally, my own years as a social science scholar, has taught me that it is the recordings of ones socialization and interactions in life, recorded through the function of the brain to create memory – the video library of our lives, that informs what we perceive. It is this video and photographic library, that informs our perceptions and not our eyes. The mind is indeed far more superior to and quicker than the eyes, and thus, influences what the eyes see.
If a matter does not absorb a certain frequency of light, that frequency will be reflected, so its color will be perceived by the observer. If all colors of light are reflected, rather than absorbed by a material, it will appear white. If all colors of light are absorbed, rather than reflected by a material, it will appear black. notice the term “appear.”
Our “Color filters” allow only certain colors of light to pass or be transmitted through them. For example, matter observed or seen through a blue filter will look blue if the objects reflect blue; objects of other colors will appear black because the other color wavelengths are being absorbed by the filter.
Our task as members of the human species, as global citizens in an ever-interconnected, interdependent, globalized world, is to defeat xenophobia by challenging ourselves, adjusting our color filters, so that we see the human lives who intersect our lives, and who exist in the space we call earth. This adjustment will cause us to see what is before us, rather than the impressions reflected through the filters of race, gender, social class, social status, religion, geography.
Let us truly, really, honestly, endeavor to see each other. Let the light of the divinity in you salute the light of the divinity in your fellow human beings. Namaste.