I read this article and enjoyed it (as much as one can enjoy an article about psychopaths and evil-doers). I didn't even notice the graphic being about skin tone. I don't think that makes me racist.

"Not thinking about race is a cousin to thinking racist thoughts. Only thinking hard about race helps alleviate racism."

Think hard about it to overcome it. But isn't the point of equality getting to a point where nobody thinks about race because it isn't an issue?

These are skin colors? Come on. Say what you will about dark colors being associated with evil, but I've never seen a single person with mustard, orange, bright red or burgundy skin.

And, just as a follow up, when I first read the article and saw the graphic, I was more uncomfortable that someone took the time to scale the evilness of murders. Reading through the descriptions, I couldn't tell why some of them were more evil than others. It seems like a sort of ambiguous and potentially arbitrary thing. Isn't the more discussion-worthy aspect of this article the fact that someone took the time to "rate" evil?

oh yes. a glaring example would be the NYC anti-Muslim throat slashing hate crime yesterday where a cab driver was attacked and slashed in the throat (committed by a white man) becuase he's a Muslim

Various news organizations are trying to make excuses for the white racist attacker, clainming he suffers from post-trauma ("impulsive!") or alcoholism.

He's a racist and a psychopath, period.

Since when are people maroon? Also, all the people used to illustrate the graphic in the article were white. I see very association between color and evil in this article or graphic. I agree that the more noteworthy discussion topic would the rating of evil.

I think this is a stretch... especially since a majority of serial killers are white.

I'm pretty sure that if you were African-American, and some level of experience with the legal system... you would think that this is a pretty big deal.

The ultimate privilege is being able to completely dismiss this.

I think some people need to adjust the colors on the monitors. I don't see any maroon; all these colors look like skin tones to me.

It doesn't matter whether or not they loo like realistic skin tones. The fact that we associate light with good and dark with bad, even though that thinking does not originate with race, causes us to associate dark PEOPLE with bad, and we need to work on it.
And I second everything said by the anonymous commenter who replied to Kelly.

I'm glad someone pointed out that the colors looked like skin tones on their monitor, because on mine they look pretty inhuman (esp. the orange and red in the middle of the scale, but the reddish-brown at the end too). That helps me understand the post better than I did when I first read it.

Sorry but this is some bull shit. Some designer didn't realize that his color scheme could be interpreted as racist - does that mean that he was racially biased or propagating stereotypes? Hell no, he just used a color scheme and you interpreted it.

Think about the level of mental energy that is being expected here. Lia is saying that it is the responsibility of anyone who creates media to know every possible racially, sexually, religiously, etc. coded interpretation that could exist. The underlying argument here is that it is the creators’ responsibility to patiently educate themselves about purposefully racist color schemes, cultural references, fashion, etc, and an unwillingness to be completely conversant in the minefield, or to let something slip through every now and again (as I personally thought NPR was pretty good about this kind of thing, although the last couple posts on this site are making me question that), is evidence that you are behaving in an insidious fashion.

Am I interpreting that correctly?

Note to self: illustrate degrees of awfulness with the blue spectrum.

I see yellow, orange, red, and purple. None of those colors look like the skin color of anyone I know. :|

I think it's possible to read too much into things, and that anyone who sees this sliding color scale as racist might be just a hair too sensitive.

However... I am white. So, what do I know?

When do we stop blaming the people who make these things (and honestly, I don't think the person had skin color in mind, I don't see that at all) and start blaming the people who read race into these things?

The person who made this might not be racist, but the person who looks at this and immediately thinks of race maybe is, just a teensy bit.

Seriously, if an artist or designer has to be responsible for EVERY thought a person thinks about what they create, we may as well not even bother.

"And not thinking is one of the most insidious ways that racism and other bigotries get reproduced."

in·sid·i·ous: INTENDED to entrap or beguile, stealthily treacherous or deceitful

You might consider changing that word, and your tone. You can't suggest that this was accidental or subconscious on the part of the designer and then use words to paint them a villain. I agree with you that we need to think about race and that we, human beings, have an overwhelming amount of baggage.
If the way you participate is by pointing out these sorts of subconscious fuck-ups, that's helpful. We all make them, I'm sure. But if in each post like this you also caricature a villain, then you're not really helping at all. Look, you have a comment board full of people crying out, "oh, nope, that's not me, I see why he's a monster, I know my privilege and don't make those mistakes" or "you're so full of shit!" Nobody is going to see the mistake you've pointed out in themselves when you use sensational words to describe the every day. This isn't a tabloid, take the middle road and relate these stories so that we can see these mistakes as our mistakes.

Oh yes, those purple people certainly are oppressed. What with the one-eyed-one-horned-flying-eaters and all.

I didn't immediately notice the skin-toned color of the graph and the darkest color is showing up a bit maroon on this computer screen. But I do think that it is very worthy of consideration. And the point that not thinking about how race may or may not enter into the equation is very, very important. It may be a lot to ask of people, but it's also a lot to ask of minorities to continue to have to look the other way or say "oh, well, I guess they didn't mean that..." and endure the effects of careless thought.

In light of that, I do think a skin neutral color would have been best. Blue, red, orange...lots of colors to choose from. Many of which would evoke the idea of evil or psychopath better than these.

I looked at the graph and my first thought was that you thought it was discriminatory against psychopaths. After all, being a psychopath doesn't mean doing anything evil.

Why would this be considered racist when the majority of the photos featuring serial killers were white? I think people are too sensitive about a supposed hidden or innate racism. And as a graphic designer, I'm aware of how color affects emotion. I can tell you that I would've chosen a simple light-to-dark palette because going from green-to-red would've left this ugly mush color in the middle. Light-to-dark palettes DO NOT always insinuate race - they indicate quantity. Think about ink: a little ink produces a lighter hue. Lots of ink produces a darker or richer hue. Light-to-dark indicates low-quantity to high-quantity.

We as humans are wired to see bits of ourselves in EVERYTHING we look at. Perhaps that's why so many people find unintended meaning in things such as these.

"Some readers say that the colors, on their computer, look yellow, orange, and red; others see the skin colors that I see. So there may be significant variation in how these colors appear on different monitors… which is a whole other interesting problem for people who produce web content!"

These readers are trolls trying to deligitimize what you're saying. While the greater effect may be little, people could still keep your criticisms in mind more often.

I just read the article, and it gave me the creeps. The second-least evil category (after those who kill in self-defense) includes 'jealous lovers.' WTF? It sounds like a justification for violence against women. I hope this scale isn't brought into wide-spread use without some serious revisions.

"I think not being racist is the new racism"--A character in NBC's 'Community' (when they attempt to create a race-neutral "human being" for their mascot).

The one on the far right ("evillest") definitely looks like a dark brown that could be a skin color on my monitor. The yellow for 1 is just slightly off what could be a real skin color, as is the orange. The red for medium-evil is the only one that looks nothing like a real skin tone, but it does look like many old cartoons of "red" Indians.

This is a stretch. I'm sorry, I love this blog, but...come on.

I think the article itself is a little wonky: for example, under "killers who act in an impetuous moment, yet without marked psychopathic features", it talks about a man who fantasized about cannibalism, and murdered a woman to fulfill that fantasy (but not before raping her corpse). And who got off on an insanity plea. If the court deemed him insane, I daresay it might be fair to describe him as having "marked psychopathic features". And in another place, it describes a young woman who paid a classmate to kill her abusive father as "not evil" (#1 on the scale) because it was self-defense, but another woman who killed her abusive husband as a #5 on the scale because she killed him despite not having been being abused right that second. I fail to see how that's incredibly different than #1, except she did the dirty work herself, and I definitely fail to see how that's three points worse than a jealous lover.

All in all, the whole scale seems really subjective, and I fail to see how it's worth even having an article about it that required someone to make a possibly badly-colored image.

Perhaps the designer was actually colour blind (not in the racial sense, and DAMMIT but that's an irritating meaning-collision); not everyone who illustrates their articles pays a pro illustrator to do the work, and not everyone can see colour in the "average" way.

As people have said here those colours could look like skin tones (they sort of do to me) or like tones of red. To some people they'd be indistinguishable from green. To a very few they would simply be grey-black.

The rest of the article is also irritating too.

Though this blog could mostly be called "Really Stretching To Make a Point" this boggles the mind. The chart is one of intensity, almost every chart of intensity goes from a lighter color to a darker color. Had they gone from a light green to a very deep red/brown (as many maps of violence and such, or a light blue to deep red) would it have been unconsciously racist? The graphic design choice was probably one to be "different". This post is utter nonsense.

None of the colors on that chart are skin tones that I've ever seen (the browns are too maroon) and psychopaths tend to be white people, anyway (or at least the ones that commit the most heinous acts).

"And not thinking is one of the most insidious ways that racism and other bigotries get reproduced."

Such a comment could only come from the "ivory tower" (where the philosopher-queens and kings know better than us plebs) - if the person did not consciously choose to associate these colors with races and then with evil they did not produce a racist graphic. I find your claim that using a true black would be better as disingenuous as it would probably go from a very light gray or white to black and thus look! the people creating the graphic have used the generally accepted names of skin tone for two races as signifier of less evil to most evil.

The issues with the chart don't lie with the color scheme but with the subjectivity. Why are psychopaths more evil than those that have empathy and still choose to commit murder?

These colors could remind people of the skin color tests that were created during Apartheid to categorize people. Those colors weren't exactly skin colors either, but they still served the purpose of deciding who belonged to what race. And if they used white to black, with a series of grays in between, those still wouldn't be considered skin colors that you've ever seen on anyone. But could you also argue with the same notion that associating white with one concept and the darkest of colors with another (as we've aligned those colors with two very basic racial identities) that there would be no racism implied in that action?

Oh well.
And the actual article, colors notwithstanding, is creepy.

I sort of can't believe this many 21st Century people never imagined that colors on their monitor might not be exactly what everyone else in the entire damn world is seeing?? That just... never crossed their minds.

So what you're all saying is, you can only recognize your own personal perception of reality. Everything else is rejected as patently absurd.

Seriously, there is no hope.

Ms. Wade 'wanted' to see skin colors..

I see skin colors =O

CRT. Blaming the rest of us for their racism since 2010 apparently. I thought that was a new thing.

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