Few weeks back, I happened to read this book ‘Six Thinking Hats’ by Edward de Bono. It was a good interesting idea but a badly written book. That’s natural because de Bono is more of a thinker than a writer. I liked the idea of organising our thoughts with the six-hats method. What struck me was the choice of colours by de Bono and how he had assigned them to various types of thinking. To get straight to the point, the black hat is supposed to symbolise ‘negative thinking’. How’s that?
Black negative. White positive. Why is black always associated with unpleasant things? Isn’t this a subtle way of racial discrimination? On one side we say ‘no to racism’ and then we see that subtly and symbolically racism exists. While it’s considered an offence to show racial discrimination, some racists never miss a chance to show the difference these ways. The colour black is not such an unpleasant colour in the Tamil language. That’s because Tamil is not the language of the white race. In English, most of the expressions using the black colour never have a pleasant reference.
A disastrous Monday is a black Monday. You don’t want to get a black mark. You would be careful of the black sheep. You don’t want to be blacklisted by anyone. You don’t want your stuff to be sold in the black market. You’d never like to be black mailed. Nothing scares you more than black magic. You may not be very popular with your black humour. You’d never appreciate a black-hearted person. You’d wear the black hat to look at the negatives of an idea. We will all vanish into the black hole.
If you are a black person, how comfortable would you be in using these expressions? Unfortunately, these cannot be erased from the language. These expressions have been in use for decades and centuries, probably since the first black man was noticed by an English-speaking man. To use any of these expressions may not mean you’re racist but I cannot ignore the undercurrent. Edward de Bono first talked about the six hats in the mid-80s. He could have said, black hat symbolises creativity or positive thinking. He didn’t. At least, I think we should be mindful of this fact when we propound new ideas and coin new words and expressions.
With these kind of references to the colour black, it’s hard to whitewash the undertones.
2. Sridhar
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12 Feb 09
Hi Vijay,
One thing you have mentioned is not necessarily right. English-speaking men are racist! I am sure even a french or belgian or spanish can act differently with a black coloured man. So your assumption that racism is to do with English speaking may not be right.
Other than that, I like the thought process. It is refreshingly different.