Comments on: I’m pretty sure Oprah would prefer to be white. Right? I mean, who wouldn’t? https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/ Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:24:32 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.8 By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548931 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:24:32 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548931 Rich: I agree with you . I think this show was probably a good thing to do.

Radge: Working on it…

]]> By: Radge Havers https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548930 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:22:27 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548930 If you really want to promote atheism on Oprah, you need to come up with a special atheist diet or a newly discovered atheist secret ritual and meditation technique with lots of affectations. But whatever you do, it has to have the word “secret” in it. Act like it will save the universe and be sure to be deferential and plug all of Oprah’s stuff.

]]> By: Rich Wilson https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548929 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:00:57 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548929 I will say kudos to Oprah for showing people what life is like in other countries. Too many Americans think that since the US of A is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave that everybody else is just 2nd rate Chicken Shit.

]]> By: Radge Havers https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548928 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:59:49 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548928 Cyanosis — caused by deoxygenated hemoglobin… yikes!

“Blue! Its F#$&ing blue!!! Cyan?”

Blasphemer!

The prejudice expressed in favor of the color blue seems to derive from the antiquated but persistent notion that there is but one important color model, that it’s subtractive and that its primaries are Red, Yellow and Blue (RYB). It’s a hold over from the 1800’s.

Now-a-days, in the most common subtractive model, Cyan is a primary (CMYK). It has been so for the last 100 years give or take. Blue is a primary in the complementary additive model (RGB). Believe it or not, this actually matters to people who have to work with color models; not just foo-foo-chi-chi decorators but engineers and researchers.

FWIW, if you arrange the colors on a wheel they are roughly related like this:
   Red
   Magenta
   Blue
   Cyan
   Green
   Yellow
   and Red again

Additive: Blue+Green=Cyan
Subtactive: Cyan+Magenta=Blue

Now can’t we all just get along?

]]> By: Donna B. https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548927 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:52:50 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548927 I will never know what it is like to be black, nor will black people ever know what it is like to be white.

However… blacks know what it is to “act” white as whites know what it is to “act” black. Perhaps those of you who do not live in an area where the numbers of blacks and whites are near equal do not see this as much as I do.

It’s obvious to me that the differences are cultural now. Skin color has lost its meaning, but culture has not and it is the black culture that has changed the most (IMHO) over the past 50-60 years.

The cultures will not change as long as skin color is used for an excuse – this applies to both blacks and whites.

]]> By: llewelly https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548926 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:27:38 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548926

Which made me wonder, if you could choose your color, would that make it ok to discriminate against someone based on color?

It would be like the choice to wear a suit. Which is to say, it would be really stupid and asinine to judge someone by the color they chose to be, but such judgments would be endemic in large swaths of business and academia.

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548925 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:40:24 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548925 Skep: Good questions. I’m not making a comparison between being black and being an atheist. I’m using the old substitution trick. Like where you have CNN reporters babbling about “Atheist this, atheists that” and it may not sound so bad to many people, but if you replace “Athist” with, say “Jew” suddenly it sounds astonishingly racist, horrific, even scary.

I’m sure Oprah reads my blog, and when she reads this post, it will change her whole world view!

I doubt very much that Oprah is new to thinking about atheism. Maybe. How could anybody be, though, really?

]]> By: skeptifem https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548924 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:24:51 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548924 is it really appropriate to compare a position like atheism, that anyone can in theory understand, to blackness? I will never know what its like to be black no matter how I try. And really, if Oprah is new to thinking about atheism (and I suspect she is) why wouldn’t she be kinda resistant to it? Attempting civility in thinking about a position so foreign to your own world view is not half bad, if you ask me. I can’t count the number of times I acted kinda douchey when I first heard of something that I was originally opposed to, but that I now agree with.

]]> By: Irene https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548923 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:16:22 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548923 I think it is up to people to decide what they are called.

]]> By: Jared https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548922 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:14:57 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/10/22/im-pretty-sure-oprah-would-pre/#comment-548922 Would it be socially acceptable to label my own skin cells with GFP?

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