Black and White

After the discussion we had in the lecture on friday about being so politically correct that we are frightened to mention the colour of someones skin, I reflected on it for some time. In my hometown, the majority of people living there are white, but a large proportion of them are a little ignorant. Passing someone in the street, it wouldn't be uncommon to hear someone say something that shocks the average person. They are either racist or just oblivious to the fact that the derogitory names that they use for asians or black people are extremely offensive and I hope it's the latter. It was refreshing for me to move away from such a small rural area to Dundee and finally experience what it is like to live in a multicultural city.
In Friday's lecture we had to choose a person, emotion and object and I picked "homeless man" "sad" and "television". Jonathon gave an example of an elderly man, crying and television, so it was quite similar. I thought, in an obvious way, that the homeless man would be sad that he didnt have a telly, but when I started to look at the situation in more depth I began thinking about consumerism and how obsessed the west is with material possessions. Why did I picture a white man in rags on a busy city street, peering into an electrical shop window? Why didn't I picture a man whose house had been destroyed by a tsunami on the news? Why did I automatically imagine him being white?