Topic: WHAT DOES “BLACK” AND “WHITE” LOOK LIKE ANYWAY? (Page 1 of 1)

Interesting stuff....

http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/10/24/what-does-black-and-white-look-like-anyway/

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“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” Voltaire

While interesting, I think the real reason these "differences" pop up is because most do not realize the tricks the eye plays with shadow, light and darkness.

One can clearly see this type of play in Photoshop, for example, when playing with the Channels.

In the case illustrated in the link, one tends to see the features of Obama as more prominent, because of the bigger differences in shadow and highlights, mainly due to the darker skin tone.

Especially the teeth and gums stick out - and another good example are the eyebrows, which tend to turn into a large, black smear (due to the lack of contrasting colors). Same goes with the ears.

The human eye tends to lump darker areas into "bigger", whereas lighter tones seem "smaller".

Detail is also harder to discern, when the tones are nearer to one another, without stark contrast.

Especially in a very dark face (I use Aborigines of Australia here as an example), only the eyes seem to stand out, making them seem to stare at one (because there is a large lack of other details for the eye to notice). Since the white contrasts very stark against the otherwise black and detail-poor facial background, the eyes appear to be bigger, and stare at one. The same goes for white teeth on the background of black gums.

And staring is often considered an aggressive posture. It certainly puts the one being stared at in a sort of "alarm" state.

WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles

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The human eye tends to lump darker areas into "bigger", whereas lighter tones seem "smaller".

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I think it's the other way around ... light areas seem bigger and dark areas seem smaller. Good points though...

Btw, Aborigines are also seen as aggressive because some of them ambush, attack and rob local white people and tourists ... a former co-worker of mine was attacked for no apparent reason while on his trip in Australia ... he managed to flee tho.

(Edited by Arthurio on 10-26-2008 00:12)

You would normally be correct - however, there are differences in the white/dark areas, within the area being compared (like a human face, in this case), especially if we take shadowing into account.

As we are dealing with a human face, and it has contours, by darkening most of the area (such as black skin has a tendency to do), the contour (detail) is reduced, therefore one sees mostly a "flat, large, dark area" as the face, with less detail, somewhat. To that, the stark contrast of the white of the eyes and teeth tend to reduce the total contrast even more.

Of course, ambient lighting will tend to either strengthen or weaken this effect, accordingly. Suffice it to say, that in areas of less lighting, the darker skin color will tend to hide even more detail, resulting in just eyes and teeth as details against a black, featureless plain.


As for Aborigines being aggressive - well, that is a totally different story, isn't it?

WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles

NoJive,

That is an interesting page. I actually find it fascinating that a page like that can even still be up in a world where race is used so often to divide us. Personally, I think it's no more significant than hair color, height, weight, etc.

I think someday we'll be choosing how our children will look because genetic engineering will be so commonplace. It'll be interesting to see what we'll use to draw up the divisions then.

. . . : : . . Innervating Your Eyes & Mind : . . .

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It'll be interesting to see what we'll use to draw up the divisions then.

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Political and Religious affiliation

WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles

No doubt, we're doing a great job of those right here.

. . . : : . . Innervating Your Eyes & Mind : . . .

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WebShaman said:

quote:It'll be interesting to see what we'll use to draw up the divisions then.



Political and Religious affiliation

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Nonsense.
It will obviously be sports teams!

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WebShaman said:

It'll be interesting to see what we'll use to draw up the divisions then.

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At first some kids will look like their parents' favorite movie stars/models/etc. Then they'll discover that since everyone now looks the same it's boring and start doing all kinds of crazy shit like growing 4 arms and 6 eyes. But that will be the norm. The real freaks will be the ones with 256 eyes on their back that can blink all of them in patterns and crawl on 16 legs at the same time. Some of the people who are either too poor or don't care about fashion will call themselves purists and oppose the whole idea of genetic modifications. Ultimately the freakshow and the purists will wage war and the freakshow will win since they have more arms and money which means they can throw more crap at the racist purist axis. In the end the "genetically superior humanoids" (which will be the PC term) will agree that the purists were at fault and thus all remaining non modified humans should pay reparations for several generations.

BTW - I did not say that.

WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles