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I don’t use my blog much.  In fact, I have not used my blog at all and my site has been live for years now.  Well, today I have something I want to share and it’s something important to me.  Recently, I have grown troubled by the overbearing tone of racism in the current media.  Every time I look at my social media, I am seeing a saddening amount of posts by people sharing their two cents on this topic.  In my small social media bubble, their message is clear.  It is to point out that racism still exists and also to put an end to it.  Sadly, I couldn’t agree more.  Why do I say sadly?  I say sadly because today I wanted to do something profound (at least in my mind).  I wanted to search online for uplifting stores of different races helping one another.  I wanted to find something touching and then post it on Facebook to show there is an opposition out there and that we need to place our focus on that fact instead.  I was going to ask my friends to seek out an uplifting story themselves and share it to keep that good vibe going. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as I imagined to find such stories.  I searched, ‘anti racist story’, ‘touching story between races’, etc, etc. I was able to find one here and there but was truly blindsided by the amount of opposing stories and videos that were still showing up.  I can’t help but believe that humans just love (or have been programmed) to spread negativity and this is the reason for the lack of opposing feel good stories.  Everyone knows the news is full of negativity and for some reason, people keep tuning in.  What’s wrong with our society that we don’t demand to want feel good truths?  They happen every single day, yet we don’t display or celebrate them with even a tenth of the amount of effort that the negativity get spread.  I have long been an advocate of turning the news off and choosing not to subscribe to TV.  My family only watches Netflix or movies on demand to avoid commercial programming and to have the choice of what entertainment we wish to fill our brains.  I truly feel this simple methodology has helped me fuel my self thinking point of view on matters of the world.

What does all this have to do with graphic design?  Why am I making this my first post ever on a logo and web design website?  Well, because a long time ago, I saw a video shared on Facebook that sparked an Idea for me.  The story was of a young ‘human’ talking about racism.  His message was clear, to wake up and end racism.  Yes, I know we have seen hundreds, if not thousands of these saying the same thing. What made his message different and truly stand out for me was something he said in the video. He said “there is no such thing as black or white skin”.  If you remove those labels you remove the one thing that perpetuates racism at its core.  We are all humans.  Hell, my family of six does not have one skin tone that is the same shade.  When I saw that video I had the thought to create a color chart much like the charts I see and use on a daily basis as a graphic designer.  Only this chart would be different.  It would show the difference between the actual colors black and white and the skin tones of humans.  They truly are not the same thing and honestly, they can’t even be compared.  I didn’t take the time to prepare this chart back when I initially thought of it and allowed the idea to instead rest inside me.  Well, today when I found myself frustrated while trying to find the good in humanity the idea came up in my mind again.  I decided to sit down and create it and to share the reason why here in this post.  Once I created it, what was stunning to me was that you instantly see how blatantly different the colors black and white truly are from the shades of ourselves.

I would like to continue the message I learned from that young man’s video years ago.  Let’s try and remove the words ‘Black’ and ‘White’ from our vocabulary concerning ourselves and other humans.  Ask yourself this… If you are on the phone and someone who you’ve never met on the other line asks “what color are you?”, would you say ‘Human’?  I know that the vast majority of people would not.  This doesn’t make us racist by any means but learning to change that answer certainly removes it from our character at its core.

I ask you to copy or click here to download my colorblind chart and place it as your profile pic for a while, print it out and hang it at your desk, or do whatever you’d like with it.  Your repetitious view of it may be exactly what you will need to remember the correct answer to “what color are you?”.

“Change the Label, Change the Love”

John Brandenburg

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