Quote:
Originally Posted by classicman
. To the rest of your post - Really? One's psyche is not affected by skin color? Oh please share with me how that works. I have zero proof, but my initial reaction is to disagree wholeheartedly.
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I didn't say it had no effect on the pysche, but that any effect is entirely cultural.
There are many places in the world where people go their whole lives not seeing people of a different colour. In such a place a child is unlikely to consider their skin colour in any deeper terms than the shape of their foot, the colour of their hair, or the length of their fingers. It is simply a physical feature. They'd be aware of it. But not as an important issue of identity. Race likewise only becomes an important coponent of identity when set against other races. Unless one is raised in a place where races mix or are in tension, it need never be something consciously thought about during childhood.
There is nothing inherent about skin colour or 'race' to affect the development of a child. However, ALL children go through psycho-sexual development as they grow. beginning (if I remember my child psych correctly) around the age of three.
Psycho-sexual development is fundamental to the human experience, it is a fundamental process which all healthy humans go through. The way that manifests and what it means differs from one to another culture, but the fact of it's happening is universal.
Skin colour, literally is skin deep. There are no differences in brain structure, or in brain chemistry relating to skin colour.
Psycho-sexual identities appear to have correlating brain structrures and brain chemistry. Whilst the differences between 'male' and 'female' brains are minor, they are measurable. Work in his field continues to show that such measurable differences also exist between the brains of straight, gay and bisexual people. Similarly it seems from the work being done in this field that measurable differences exist between the brains of people with expected gender identities and people with trans gender identities.
It is really not the same thing as waking up one morning and thinking one is black when one is in fact white.
[eta] further to that: you could lock a child in a room from the age of 2 with no human company beyond the presentation of meals and the taking away of waste, and whilst they will probably be unable to get to grips woth language or social interaction, they will still have been through psycho-sexual development. The results would be warped, and confused, but the process would still have occurred.