Larry’s full of
“fear and defensive anger” and he's becoming
delusional. When my brother sees people in the street who he thinks have “the sign,” he starts to mutter under his breath and sometimes he even screams at them and gets into fights. He once spent three months in jail for physically attacking a stranger who had “the sign”.
I’ve tried to reason with him. I’ve asked him how he knows that there are people among us who are from a different species, but he says, “I don’t need evidence. I KNOW!” He says he has to protect himself from people with the “sign,” and I’m afraid he’s getting paranoid. He’s bought a gun.
But when I tell my brother he has a problem, he angrily denies it, and he eventually severs relationships with anyone who criticizes his bizarre behavior.
The more I talk with him, the more details he gives me and it’s really scary. He thinks people with the sign are more sexual than him, and he’s afraid they may take his wife. He says they’re after his children. He says they have more rhythm, the can run faster and have better coordination, and I can tell this is all hurting his self-esteem.
But sometimes he’s really grandiose. I confess that I read his diary and it’s full of stories in which he imagines himself to have superhuman abilities, like Superman and Tarzan!
My brother tells me that people with “the sign” are really stupid, but he is afraid they may take his job from him. I asked him how someone stupid could do his job, but he just says, “I KNOW THEY CAN!” He gets really angry when he sees people with “the sign” successfully doing things he says they are “too stupid to do.” He went to his boss and his co-workers, trying to organize a campaign: “Resist the Sign.” He’s becoming irrational.
I told my brother I think he needs help, but he got really angry. He said, “You like people with the sign more than you like me!” I had to make believe I agreed with him to keep him from disowning me. Now, he’s got his children talking about “the sign,” and I’m afraid he may be teaching this to his children.
I can’t find anything about this illness on the Internet, but I found something called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association and I’ve found that many of my brother’s symptoms are listed there as symptoms and behaviors of other mental illnesses. “Larry” says he has to protect himself from people with “the sign,” even strangers, so I think maybe he’s paranoid. He’s got a such a morbid fear of strangers with “the sign” that I think maybe this is becoming an irrational “phobia”
He says people with the sign are plotting to have sex with his wife and his daughter, so I think he may be ”delusional”. He actually counts people with “the sign” and leaves areas where too many of them are assembled, so I think he’s “hyper-vigilant” and ”avoidant.” He worries constantly about this all the time and invents elaborate schemes to avoid contact with people with “the sign,” so I think he may be “obsessive compulsive”.
My brother has low “impulse control. He gets really impulsive and aggressive with people he doesn’t even know, screaming and swearing at strangers on the street, not only if they have "the sign" but if they are walking or riding in a car with someone who has the sign.
All of Larry’s strange thoughts are making him very angry, hurting his personal relationships. He can hardly sleep sometimes worrying about “those people.” He even calls government offices telling them he’s afraid and asking the to "please do something!" I’m afraid he’s gonna get locked up.
I took my brother to a psychiatrist and at first the psychiatrist seemed anxious to help. I even brought with me a list of all of my brother’s emotions, ideation and behavior that I have described above. The doctor listened carefully and wrote down all of my brother’s symptoms and even said my brother might need medication. The doctor said he had seen all of these symptoms before in other patients and he was sure he could help. My brother confided in the psychiatrist so much so that he told him what “the sign” is.
That’s when the communication broke down. “The sign” is “skin color.” The psychiatrist said that because “the sign” is skin color, all of my brother’s emotions, ideation and behavior are really quite normal. “In any case,” he told me, “It’s not a mental illness.”
I asked the doctor how “Larry” can have so many symptoms of other mental illnesses he is not mentally ill. The doctors said, “Your brother has what sociologists call “racism. It’s a complex and interrelated group of mental thoughts, emotions and resulting behaviors that can cause loss of job, trouble in interpersonal relationships and can lead to violent outbursts, even rape and murder. It is an undesirable and sometimes dangerous condition that exists in the human mind, but we don’t think of it as mental illness.
“This is about RACE,” I asked the doctor? What medical proof is there that this “race” thing exists and that there are people of a different “races” living amongst us?” The doctor said, “There is no proof, but it is quite “normal” to hold this belief. The belief is not a “delusion,” even if there is no evidence to support it. The belief is quite normal among my patient population, and so any emotions, ideation and behavior that come as a result of that belief are also normal, no matter how extreme they are.”
Needless to say, I was speechless. Although my brother has a large number of disabling symptoms that are typical of various mental illnesses, the doctor is refusing to help him, simply because the visual “cue” that arouses my brother’s symptoms is “skin color?”
If the cue was spiders, women, men, heights or elevators, they could help him, but since the cue is skin color, he’s on his own?
Now my brother is having angry fantasies. When he sees “those people,” he says he wants to hang them from a tree, cut of their penises, or tie a rope around them and drag them behind his pickup truck. I think he may do something illegal again. My brother told me he has bought a gun and he’s going to shoot a bunch of people who have “the sign,” and then he’s going to shoot himself. I’m afraid he could become part of a multiple murder-suicide.
If doctors won’t even recognize that my brother has a problem, I don’t know what will happen to my brother and people like him, or to their victims.
But, by now, many readers may have realized that I do not really have a brother, “Larry.” "Larry" is a composite of cases I have read about in the newspaper (two of which are linked here) and people I have known or interviewed when working as a lawyer and in various other positions.
Larry has a very extreme case of a mental illness that regularly goes undiagnosed and untreated in American society and the world. If Larry's arousal cue were anything but color, his psychiatric emotional, ideational and behavioral disorder would be considered so "severe" as to be disabling, since they are longstanding and prevent him from earning a living and from functioning in other significant areas of his life. Any pervasive and delusional thought pattern that leads a person to commit crimes and be incarcerated must be considered "severe" for him and society. So, in Larry's case, his condition is "severe."
But many others of us have had thoughts and feelings similar to Larry's, although to a lesser degree, and therefor we have been able to avoid acting upon them in ways that would cause formal complaints, loss of job, incarceration. Living in segregated neighborhoods and going to segregated schools may be enough to alleviate our fears and worries. We might sometimes feel as Larry does, on those few occasions when we have to interact with people of another skin color, but we have more impulse control and/or compassion, and so our cases may be "moderate" rather than severe.
But, we still are delusional, because we believe in "race" and a slew of other subsidiary ideas that fuel our gnawing angers, animosities and fears and resentments. We are not able to see that skin-color is merely color and not a "sign" of all of the other things that we consider to be bad and good. And so, although we don't kill anyone or lose our jobs, we still behave in ways that perpetuate our own and others delusional thinking, resulting emotions and behaviors. We have "moderate" Color-aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder.
In spite of all of the societal conditioning of our thoughts, starting with the delusional concept of "race," many of us manage to interact successfully and easily with a variety of people regardless of their skin color. We can perform roles higher or lower in the social hierarchy regardless of our skin-color and based more on our skills, abilities, and determination instead of delusional notions of our own superiority.
We don't beat anyone up, drag them to death or call strangers offensive names in public, and we don't directly or willingly support others who would engage in that behavior. Often, thoughts come into our heads that we know are aroused by our perception of the skin color of another person and/or our own skin color, but these ideas are not so compelling that they lead us to illegal acts or even acts that would attract others' notice. Compared to Larry, our condition is certainly relatively "mild."
As with any illness that affects the mind, it is extremely important to develop ways to distinguish "extreme," "moderate" and "mild" cases from those people who do not have the illness at all. This is how we distinguish between those who are immediately dangerous and at risk of "going postal," those who need help to avoid progressing that far, and those who have no illness and therefor present no danger and need no help at all.
Extreme Color-aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder (ECEIBD) is a closely interrelated cluster of extreme emotion, ideation and behavior that are aroused by skin-color and cause impairment in one or more areas of the patient’s life. In ECEIBD, extremes of emotion, ideation and behavior arise and become harmful in conjunction with the perception of and reaction to the skin-color of a person or persons. In patients with ECEIBD, perception of skin color is the stimulus or “cue” that elicits feelings and thoughts in the patient that may become manifest in extreme behaviors.
When afflicted with extremely color-sensitive emotion, ideation and behavior, people who are otherwise law-abiding and respectful of others may commit acts that are unlawful, violent, risk loss of employment and social position, and rend the fabric of society.
A November 2005 study by the NCVS Bureau of Justice Statistics entitled “Hate Crimes Reported by Victims and Police” based on interviews with 500,000 persons, found that 210,000 victimizations motivated by hate or bias occurred per year in the United States, not including reports from institutions such as churches, schools and businesses. In 56% of hate crime victimizations the offenders motive was color-arousal, (referred to as “race” in the survey), while 27.9% of victims perceived the offender’s motive to be the victim’s ethnicity, which in many cases are also crimes against a person of another color. If race and ethnicity are combined, 83.9 percent of hate crimes are aroused by either race or perceived ethnicity.
Although hate crimes are often perceived as a phenomena that primarily victimizes minorities, these statistics indicate that whites are equally likely to be victims of color-aroused hate crimes, with 0.09 victims per 1000 whites, 0.07 per thousand blacks and, 0.09 per one thousand Hispanics reporting that they were victims of hate crimes reported to the National Crime Victimization Survey An estimated 44% of hate crimes are reported to police.
Beside the criminal violations motivated by extreme color-arousal, in FY2004, the US Equal Opportunities Commission processed 29,631 allegations of “race” based discrimination. “Charges of racial harassment filed with EEOC have more than doubled over the past decade from 2,849 charge filings in Fiscal Year 1991 to approximately 6,550 charge filings in FY 2000, about 8% of all charges filed with the agency. (Unpublished Manuscript based on NCVS and US Bureau of Justice Statistics Data.)
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