Acting White: Blue Eyes vs. Black-Skin

I gained an interesting peek a short while ago into a facet of white people. This was not my expressed purpose in helping my friend, but the character of the situation caught my attention nonetheless. Too often, when differences of race or ethnicity appear, we subscribe some nefarious motive to the cause/result and spin-off into our respective worlds of verbal jousting. But more often than not differences are just an illustrative story of the less presented pathways to the present.

The place was an eye specialists’ office, specifically an ophthalmologist/surgeon, with a waiting room stacked full of patients, white patients, each with some form of eye lesion (tumor). Most of the tumors are nearly invisible and benign, but some, unfortunately, are malignant (cancerous) and must be treated, via surgery. Now this room of people was not just white, but of people, curiously, who’s location of ethnic origin (LEO) was Northern Europe and Scandinavia.

If we review eye color in humans, we might recall that mutations beyond classic brown-eyes could and did occur in all people, but only ‘stuck’ in people of higher latitudes and lower sun intensity because, bluntly put, blue/grey/hazel/green eyes did not facilitate their premature death. Fast forward to the doctor’s office and what we see, in part, is what happens when fair-skinned/eyed people move from northern latitudes southward to such places as the US, where their bodies, and in this case eyes, are not well-adapted to a different sun intensity. Wham! Nevus, nevi! Cancer!

So just as blacks in North America experience internal cancers rates that exceed the mean of their brethren in West Africa, and the white population, whites experience ‘external’, or surface-level, rates that exceed the mean of blacks as well as their folks in the old country, and for really the same reason; displacement from the latitudes to which our bodies are best adapted. Blacks were moved north (and to South America) during the Atlantic slave trade and fair whites immigrated west and southward looking for opportunity.

If we continue, we see that the cures for these higher cancer rates, other than returning to our respective ancestral homes, are quite simple. To begin, everybody needs a D3 blood serum level that is adequate. Most of us are deficient in this cheap vitamin supplement, available over-the-counter at any pharmacy/health store, that allows our immune system to root out wayward cells. Following on, everybody, young and old, needs to protect their eyes and skin from the sun. Hats, sunglasses, proper clothing, and sunscreen are needed anytime we are in the sun, not just in summer at high-noon.

It is natural for us to use our differences to exaggerate our group strengths and to attempt to hide perceived weakness, but if we look at ourselves honestly, we will always see that there is much more that makes us similar, even through the lens of our differences.

James C. Collier

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