The Black and White Myth: "Come Together and Break Free"

By John Eppolito

Come together and break free from the black and white prison called American society. There's an eight thousand pound black and white elephant in the room that no one seems to acknowledge. Anyone who has been paying attention now realizes that words affect us way more than we could have ever imagined. The terms black people and white people are no acceptions to the rule. In fact, those very terms are the epitome of how words affect society negatively.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483594453

Book preview

BOOK.

Let’s start with the obvious; people are not black or white. No one is walking around with white skin and no one is walking around with black skin. Sure, there are some people who have extremely light skin, as there are some who have extremely dark skin, but no one is actually black or white. The truth is we all share the same skin color, just different shades of it. That’s right, we are all the same color!

Basically, our skin coloring ranges from something like beige to tan to brown. Depending on complexion, the blood running through our bodies can create a pink to burgundy tint, but our actual skin colors originate from the same common base color. Obviously we all have the same pigment in our skin, so how is it that we label each other as complete opposites based on the color of our skin? If we all had light blue and dark blue skin, would we still refer to one another as black or white?

Think about it. We couldn’t have drawn a deeper line in the sand. The words black and white are among the most opposite in the english language. It’s like night and day, right and wrong, good and bad. We all learn these dramatic opposites at a very young age and they remain hard wired in our minds for life. So when we hear the terms black people and white people, our minds automatically segregate. This happens unconsciously, without our permission, whether we are aware of it or not, and it becomes hard not to pick a side and defend it passionately.

It’s human nature; we can’t help it. We have a pack mentality that can be traced back to our tribal roots. We survived for thousands of years by banding together with our own group and fighting all opposing groups. The problem is, we can’t seem to shut this primal behavior off! This is why there is always a war going on somewhere in the world. Even where there is so called peace, people fight among themselves. The East Coast vs. West Coast gang wars of the 90’s are a good example of how people who are labeled as opposites can easily turn on one another. It started with rappers Tupac and Biggie who had a legitimate beef with one another but what followed was an overall East vs. West state of mind. In the New Jersey town where I grew up, we were either labeled from up the hill or from down the hill, depending on what part of town we lived in. I’m embarrassed to admit that we would fight and ridicule each other for no other reason than our opposing labels.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but this common scenario plays out time and time again. You see, it’s not about the hill or being from the East or West Coast or skin color that causes the problem. What causes the problem is the mindset of opposing categorization. It’s the us against them mentality. A lot of this seems like common sense, so why do we still insist on labeling each other black or white? This is a good question and one we all need to ask ourselves because it’s complicated and they’re many different answers.

The truth is most of us don’t think about it all that much. We hear what people are calling each other these days and we go with that. Most people are unaware of the power that words have on us and on society as a whole. We understand that nasty racial slurs could be hurtful but words like black and white seem innocent enough. The reality is that these terms divide us by insinuating we are complete opposites. Even though most of us get along with each other outwardly, we still, at some level, segregate in our living and educational communities. That is a direct result of the black and white mindset.

Since roughly 13 percent of Americans are considered black and around 70 percent are considered white, these terms especially isolate people of color. It would be like 70% of the nation’s population, people of all nationalities, being called positive and just the Italians being singled out as negative. Remember African Americans are not black. Their skin color ranges from shades of tan to brown and the words tan and brown are not inherently negative, but the word black is. Similarly European Americans are not white. Their skin color spans from shades of beige to tan. The words beige and tan are not inherently positive but the word white is.

My point is that It’s not only the opposing us against them mentality that the words black and white inject into our psyche, it goes even deeper than that. The actual meanings of the words black and white also have a profound effect on us. When you get a chance, look up white in the dictionary. You will find definitions like: all that is good, to be pure as love. Then look up black in the dictionary and you