How to talk to kids about racism By Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN Updated 11:44 AM ET, Sun January 18, 2015 (CNN)It was one of a thousand little conversations that fill each day in a third-grade classroom. As teacher Kimmie Fink read a book featuring a Japanese character, a student brought her fingers to her eyes and tugged on the edges, stretching them into narrow slits. Fink stopped. Im Asian, she told the child, and when you do that, it hurts my feelings. The student snapped to attention. Oh! Im sorry! she told her teacher, and they went back to their book. It was a quick back-and-forth with a big lesson, but it came from a trained teacher who had rehearsed what to say. Just as Fink learned to teach math and reading, she has practiced how to squelch unwitting bias and stereotyping before it has a chance to grow into bullying or racism. cnn/2015/01/18/living/feat-teaching-diversity-schools/index.html?sr=fb011815raceschools9pstorylink NEWTON’S THEORY OF COLORS Following the article I published in the Montreal daily newspaper Le Devoir on February 26, 1986 concerning anti-Black prejudice in the West, the newspaper received reactions from all over Canada, both from the Black community and from scientific circles. Most people who reached me, while completely agreeing with me in my analysis of the deep causes of those prejudices, stated that they were not fully satisfied with what I said about the harmfulness of these prejudices in the scientific field, especially when I mentioned, as an example of that contagion, Newton’s Theory of colors. Since not enough space was available in the paper, I could not express my point of view in detail. So I will now give a concise demonstration of why Newton’s Theory of Colors is false. First of all, what is Newton’s Theory of Colors? Let me remind readers that the concept of “color” that stems from scientific experimentation is based on the demonstration in 1665 by the well-known scientist Isaac Newton. This experiment consists in running a visible light ray called “white light” through a prism in a dark room, breaking down that light into a continuous spectrum encompassing all the colors. Newton thought he had there by proven that white light is broken down by the prism into a series of seven refracted rays which produced the colors from red to violet on the screen on which they are projected. He therefore concluded that white light contains various lights, each one of which is darker than the white light itself and each of which is part of the whole. And the darkest of all (real blackness), according to Newton, is simply an absence of light. My point of view, which is shared by many scientists, is that when the dark room, which is actually black, is penetrated by the “visible light ray”, it turns into an area with a mixture of darkness and white light, so that it is no longer a “dark room”. This is the origin of “Newton’s error”, which is the result of an incorrect observation. In other words, the basic elements of his experiment are not what he thought they were: in the course of the experiment, we are actually dealing with a quasi-dark or quasi-white room. Consequently, the prism in that quasi-dark room reflects the real situation; that is to say, the prism itself is already under the influence of this mixture of white light and darkness. That fact escaped Newton’s notice. In fact, the prism in the dark room where the experiment was carried out receives darkness from one angle and a beam of white light from the other. The prism thereby puts these two elements into action. The incident light ray is transformed, softened under the effect of the surrounding shade. Acting as a wave mixer, the prism integrates the white light and the darkness. It synthesizes them in vitro based on a given degree in the well-known “Gray scale” used in photography and color television. Under the effect of the incident ray, which acts like a projector, the refracted, very subtle gray ray passes through the prism. The continuous spectrum of all the colors is formed in a quasi-dark room on a quasi-white screen, given that the spectrum was born of both white light and darkness. We therefore find that the continuous color scale, as we know it, is constituted by the breaking down, not of white light, but a mixture of white light and darkness — that is, of “gray”. As the German scholar Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: “This is the proof of the existence of the law where by light is nothing else than a mixture of light and darkness, to different degrees.” [our translation] Thus, Newton’s theory of colors proves to be completely false. Nevertheless, the techniques used in industries dealing with photography, cinematography and television are still based on that erroneous theory. In photography, laboratories are quick to discover in their work that the sum of the colors of the spectrum is gray, not white. That is why they are compelled to introduce the black color to obtain the white. There you have a demonstration in reverse that black is an integral part of light and color processes. Remember that this fact completely escaped Newton’s notice. Unfortunately, even though, in their use and application of the color scale, photo labs notice Newton’s error and correct it in practice, they still do not make the error more widely known. Why ? Some people might say that big industries using color processes — printing, photography, movies, television and even microprocessors — keep to that erroneous theory for the sake of major financial interests, especially concerning patents and trade secrets. In addition, certain anti-Black prejudices, deeply rooted in Western culture as well as in the field of optics, have to be taken into account at this “phase of rest and almost stagnation, rather than theoretical progress”. It is then up to the scientific world today — researchers, university professors, etc. — to overcome such hindrances and correct Newton’s theory, in order to free the way for progress. Lucien Bonnet contact-canadahaiti.ca bombardopolis.ca Article published in the Montreal daily newspaper Le Devoir on April 15, 1986. The author of the article, a Haitian-born Montrealer, has made a movie entitled “Où vas-tu, Haiti?” (“Where are you Heading, Hai
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 04:28:14 +0000
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