The "Is Color Really Perceived Or Is It...Imagined" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Carol and I are playing "Uno" with friends Jere and Sue.  The game requires you to place a car on top of the previous card matching either color or number.  There is more to it than that, but for my story today that is all you need to know.  It is meant to be a fast moving game and at times it is, but for the four of us, that never happens.  Laughter replaces speed throughout the game, since our reaction time is slow and in Jere's case, the color of the cards is a problem, since he has blue/green color blindness.  But, seeing the color on the cards is the least of his problem as far as life is concerned.  

Do you see red on the top?

Can you imagine seeing a stop light and realizing that you must stop when the light is green or having to proceed across the intersection when the light is red?  So, why does that happen and what percentage of the population is color-blind?  In the United States about 10% of men are color-blind while only 1% of woman are color-blind.  Just what does color-blind mean?  

And, where is the red in this photo?

A color-blind person is unable to distinguish differences in hue.  Another word that pops up in research is dichromate who is a person whose vision can only distinguish two colors.  Dichromates lack one of the three types of cones.  For example, if the red-green complement of cones is missing, he will be unable to distinguish red and green and will see all colors as yellow or blue.  Wow!  The cards in a Uno deck are red, green, blue and yellow.  Rather distressing for Jere, but we all get a good laugh when we play, including him.  That's why we spend more time laughing than playing. But, anyway, the most common form of color-blindness is red-green color deficiency.  Dark green and red look the same and are hard to distinguish from brown.  And, it can be hard to tell the difference between dark blue from purple.  I read that color-blindness is shorthand for a more complex process involving the eyes and brain.  The retina uses two types of cells: rods, which are responsible for daytime vision, including color vision, and cones which are divided into three types that absorb different wavelengths of light: red, green and blue.  Color vision deficiency means that cone cells are either missing or not sufficiently sensitive; the result is that only certain color information is being recognized and sent to the brain.  It's tough for me to think that Jere can't see all the colors that I can see.  

This is how normal vision and color-blind vision sees the same thing.

But, he has no idea what colors I can see, so it may not make any difference to him.  It is tough for me to believe that one male student in every one of my graphic arts and printing classes that I taught in high school couldn't see colors as I saw them.  But then again, did they realize that?  If they had been tested and told they were color-blind, that's one thing, but if they never knew they were color-blind, they would believe that colors they saw were the same as everyone else in the class saw.  Did that really matter?  

Mixing ink might have been tough for some students...
and I didn't realize it.  So sad for them and me!

And, how did they perceive the color wheel that I would show when we mixed ink to obtain the color we wanted to use for a printed job.  And then I began to think, how did they know what colors to wear together when they came to school each day.  Did their parents realize they were color-blind?  Then it struck me...were my children color-blind.  Couldn't have been or they wouldn't have passed their driving test when they showed them a traffic signal that ran horizontal instead of vertical and asked what color was on the right.  But, wait...they never asked me that question.  And why is green really green and red really red.  Maybe Jere really does know the colors and Carol, Sue and I don't.  Interesting thought!  Color blindness, as I said before, affects about 10% of men and 1% of women.  That's because they are in the minority.  Suppose it was the other way and 90% of males were color-blind and 99% of females were color-blind and we don't realize that.  Wow, this is too much for one day!  Jere might have won all those games and we didn't know it!  Wow!  I think we need to buy him a trophy!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.