VISUALIZATION
Please close your eyes ... relax ... imagine the world that I will be describing. You live in a world where people of color have the control. African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans… are the leaders, they make the laws, they control the economy. People of color are our senators, our congresspersons, and the head of all the major corporations. They are our university presidents, our school administrators, most of our church leaders. The President of the United States (and all previous presidents) is a man of color and 90% of his cabinet is composed of people of color.
Our neighborhoods and all of our communities are made up of POC. There are small, isolated pockets of white communities -- usually in the poorer sections of the towns and cities.
POC are everywhere. When you go to your bank, you will know that a person of color is in charge will make a decision about your loan. When you take your clothes to the dry cleaner, your shoes to the repair shop, when you put gas in your car, it is a person of color with whom you are interacting for these services. Indeed, almost everyone you encounter in the course of your day-to-day routine is a POC.
Your local supermarket stocks food that reflects the diet and customs of POC. You have to search to find foods that are more to your liking… although recently some of the major food chains have set aside one aisle for the kind of foods white people eat.
Drug stores carry medications and products geared toward POC. Bandages, for instance, are available only in shades of brown. The color "flesh" is a range--from tan to black. Cosmetics are made only for skin tones ranging from yellows to browns. It is very hard to find products for the "white" skin.
When you turn on the TV, you see POC. The ads in newspapers, TV commercials, and fashion magazines show POC. TV sit-coms, dramas, soap operas and family shows depict the tragedies, comedies, and ordinary lives of POC -- occasionally letting someone white be a part of the experience of POC. At the movies, POC have most of the leading roles -- and the supporting roles. It is not common to see white actors (except in the role of a criminal)-- and pretty rare for there to be a "white" movie. Most POC would rather watch their own people on TV and in the movies, and since they control the industry -they are the producers and directors and the scriptwriters -- that's the way it is.
When you turn on the news you learn about POC. When you see newscasts about crime and drugs in the inner cities, it is white people you see. In fact, when newspapers report crime, they always point out the race of the perpetrator is she/he is white. White people complain that the news and media are biased against them. They are allowed to complain -- POC believe in free speech -- but their complaints are seen as whining and mostly they are not taken seriously, so very little is ever done about the complaints.
POC are considered the model for being handsome and beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes, and all the various shades of skin from yellow to red to tan to browns are seen as beautiful. Women of color are considered to be the most desirable and have always been held up as the standard of female attractiveness. White people are seen as pale and unattractive. Once in a while, a white person comes along who has dark, curly hair and resembles a person of color -- usually bi-racial -- and they might get a job as a model or actor -- but usually only if their features could pass for POC.
POC are not only considered to be the most attractive, but also are the most intelligent, most industrious, and the most creative. You know very little about white history --contributions of whites to the development of this country -- this world. You know a lot about the history of POC. All through school, the teachers paid more attention to the students of color. They were seen as the brightest and most gifted. Teachers reinforced them for their achievements and pretty much ignored you if you were white, even if you did as well as the students of color -- it was a "fluke".
Psychologists have even conducted research confirming the inferiority of white people. White people just can't seem to get it together. Scholars have tried to figure out why. White people say they know what the problem is -- it is racism and discrimination. Most POC just don't buy it-- they claim that everything is equal. All this business about racism really irks a lot of POC -- after all they have done for the white people. If white people are so damn unhappy here, why don't they just go back to Europe where they came from.
Allow yourself to spend a few minutes continuing to imagine this world
you live in. Notice what feelings have come up for you.
The Education Trust
Washington DC
January 12, 1998
To return to 4500/6500 home page contents, click here.
To return to Dr. B-A's home page contents, click here.
To return to the beginning of the
handout list, click here.