Beware of the black . . .
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.
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.
You have mentioned that the colour black is not such an unpleasant colour in the Tamil language. This is not entirely true.
There is lot of bias and prejudices among us, about black skinned people, for several centuries. One good place where it is openly evident is the matrimonial advertisements, where most men want a fair and beautiful match.
This has happened inspite of the fact that many of the Hindu Gods whom we worship and pray are considered black in colour.
It is definitely a paradox.
Sridhar @ 2: Yes, I agree. It’s not entirely true. Same is with English too. But what I’ve said are not really ‘white lies’, if you get my drift . . .
Good one vijay to start…
I havn’t read ‘Six Thinking Hats’ and I don’t know much of ‘Edward de Bono’ but would like to discuss about the Black (negative).
From the above notes, I agree with the author naming black for negative
Lets admit the fact that if we know/believe in ‘Good’ we should believe in opposite of good aswell- i.e not being good i.e is “Bad” same goes to God – Evil; Positive – Negative etc…
If we agree “white” colour represents/belongs to Pleasant,True,Pure,Peace,Legal,… we should name some colour to address the opposite of whatever white represents and to my knowledge we have only RBG (Red,Blue,Green) and rest all colours are combination of these.
‘White’ is mixture/combination of all colours and ‘Black’ is the absence of all colors. We should name some colour to represent the unexpected/inexistance/obsence or opposite of ‘white’ which represents ‘Black’ eventually ended being one of our human colour.
To me one will be treated how they behaved . As most of the ‘black’ skinned might not well behaved/cultured where they exist since ages so they ended not being respected at first instance. (The crime rate is also high in records from them for their percentage) The same response will happen in any country irrespective of one’s colour. Though we don’t have black’s in our country to conclude however foreg: Do we well behave or eat together with a chinese who like & loves eating snakes,lizards, rats (maybe as lively) if he happen to work with us? do you still behave & respond the same way how you are now with your dear collegue? (To be honest I can’t) Does’nt we call this also racism irrespective of ‘Black’s’ colour.
If the english speaking men are racist then why Obama has been elected by a record winning from white’s country.?
We pray, go humble,worship god (might not be because ‘though they are black’) because its his/her original physical body converted as a deity (stone-which eventually colourless (black)) and we don’t want to beautify his naturally body with paint (artificially) by his/her original colour. To my knowledge no where in our puranas or scriptures says our God’s are black or born as black in colour.
recently I read & saw a female model who skinned in ‘Black’ is the higest paid model in France.!!!!!
That’s a nice thought Anil. But remember, the topic here is not if all white men are racist. It is about how unfortunately, we have infused racism into the language which has been spoken for centuries and will be spoken for centuries to come. That’s almost ‘unerasable’, isn’t it?
Good start! When did the first white man discover the first black person? The negative connotation of the word ‘black’ must have existed before the white man found out about black people. I’m not sure if ‘black’ when referring to black people is a bad word. They *are* black, right?
As for Tamil not having bad connotations for ‘black’, it may have been true a few hundred years back, but it’s not so any more. Now we have phrases like ‘attai karuppu’ which must be at least a hundred years old. Copycats in Tamil media heavily borrow English expressions like ‘black day’, etc. And how do you explain black flags (non-DK) and black bands which are popular here?
This comment is for Vijay Anil.
I think, Anil, you have written sub-blog post as comment!!!
Puranas does say lord Krishna was black(or bluish black),In tamil people call him as “Karmega kanna”.Karmegam denotes rainy clouds which are dark.
But then,i get my butt kicked if i wear a black dress on a festiv day
Think of the universe. Darkness is the rule. Light is an exception to the rule. Didn’t some group of sci-fi guys research and conclude that the first man on earth was black?
The human race is supposed to have originated in Africa.