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A loved one flew to Amsterdam today. By coincidence I saw these road markings (left) outside my studio that resemble the flag of Amsterdam (right).
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By Gregory S. Parks & Matthew W. Hughey

On Tuesday, January 25, 2010, Arab television network Alhurra interviewed Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA).  During the interview, Congressman Moran stated that Republicans made big gains this past November because “a lot of people in this country . . . don’t want to be governed by an African American.”  To some, these statements were not only controversial, but false.  This is because we live in a supposedly post-racial America since the election of our first black President.  For example, the 2008 voting booths had barely cooled before the Wall Street Journal proclaimed that Obama’s victory meant that we could “put to rest the myth of racism as a barrier to achievement in this splendid country.”

There have been sweeping changes in legal equality between blacks and whites since, say, the 1950s.  Moreover, white’s racial attitudes have also shifted during that same period. For example, in 1958 most whites indicated that they would not vote for a well-qualified, black presidential candidate; by 2007, almost ninety-five percent said they would.  Measuring racial progress and determining the degree to which race actually matters in America, however, is not simply—or even best—reflected in people’s expressed racial attitudes as measured through surveys.  Rather, a better measure might be the examination of people’s automatic, if not unconscious, racial attitudes.  This includes how Americans decided whether to vote for, weigh the policies of, and even re-elect the first black President.

For over the past quarter century, psychologists have found that people make automatic associations between black and white racial categories, and negative and positive words, respectively.  Even where individuals appear to harbor explicit, racially egalitarian attitudes, their unconscious racial attitudes may be wholly inconsistent.  Numerous studies find that anywhere from 75-90% of whites, roughly 65% of Asian and Latino/a Americans, and from 35-65% of blacks harbor these automatic, unconscious, pro-white/anti-black biases.  Not only do college first-year students—the typical participants of university-based psychological studies—harbor these biases; studies show that judges, lawyers, physicians, black professionals, and a broad swath of the American public hold these biases as well.  These biases are important because the influence judgment, decision-making, and behavior.

More specifically, the rhetoric against and opposition to candidate Obama can be traced, at least in part, to these unconscious anti-black biases. Undoubtedly, many conservatives probably would not have voted for candidate Obama simply because of his political leanings, party affiliation, and policy positions.  However, this point does not provide an end to the analysis of whether race matters in how Americans are influenced by Obama’s race. With regard to the run-up to the 2008 election, there are some important things to contemplate:

First, liberals and conservatives do not differ much with respect to their unconscious racial biases.  But while there is little difference between conservatives’ explicit and unconscious racial biases (both being relatively high), liberals have relatively high unconscious—but low explicit—anti-black biases.  Comparatively, conservatives’ greater consistency in their unconscious and explicit social evaluations suggests that they may be more inclined than liberals to use their unconscious biases for explicit judgment, including voting.  Second, the rhetoric around whether or not Obama is a “legitimate” American citizen appears to have substantial roots in

Card no.15 in the current series is launched today.
Woodcut 30cm x 20cm. Click to enlarge.

A friend told me of a message he received from his dog in a dream. I promised to paint a picture for him. This is the sketch.
Pencil and watercolour 23cm x 18cm. Click to enlarge.

Card No.10 in the current series, hot off the press. The Hidden Mountain could be beneath your feet right now.
Woodcut 30cm x 20cm. Click to enlarge.

Woodcut 30cm x 20cm. Click to enlarge.

Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant

It starts with a simple question: Did the totem fall? And then turns into a mind warping exercise of  “who incepted who whom?” and “how much was a dream? Am I dreaming?” Christopher Nolan’s Inception has given us hypothesizing hemophilia, for the moment at least. But for some people our real, sans IMAX dreams are enough to sustain a lifetime of “what ifs.”

Dr. Rosalind Cartwright has dedicated her entire career’s work to studying sleep, and in her new book The Twenty-four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives she proposes a new theory on the confluence of our dreaming and waking selves. Here Cartwright reveals the scientific truths behind Inception and why, once we resolve Leo’s unconscious self, we should start tending to our own.

1.) In Inception, Ellen Page plays a “dream architect.” Can we actually influence what people dream about?

That answer is: A little. If I drip water on you while you are in REM sleep (when most dreaming happens), you may tell me you dreamt it was raining. You would already have a dream story of your own creation going on but the water can be added to that dream as “Suddenly as I was trying to escape from this guy it started raining.” If I play a tape with the name of the love of your life over and over, you may begin to dream of that person. But what you dream of that person is what your unconscious needs to express about them. Dreams have an imperative of their own and resist our meddling.

2.) In the film, dream death automatically brings the dreamer back to consciousness. I’ve heard that we always have to wake up before that moment of death in a dream. Is that true, can we not “die” in our dreams?

Death is not a common theme in dreams—unless you are elderly or very ill when death is a topic on your waking mind—and we do not often dream our death occurs even when we are falling from a height. We typically wake ourselves up before we hit the ground because our unconscious memory bank has no helpful images stored to handle the emotion in the dream. But others do dream of their own funeral or see themselves dead in the hospital. These dreams are rehearsals in fantasy for what is to come.

3.) The Inception crew can only escape from a multi-layered dream (dream within a dream, within a dream…) through a carefully engineered “kick” or that leg jerk that wakes us up when we are dream free falling. Why is the “kick” so common an experience in sleep?

This is very common especially as we are falling asleep and the muscles relax. We often experience the need to resist that falling sensation and “save ourselves” by abruptly tightening the muscles again. This is called the hypnic jerk. It is a normal response and benign, except that we have to start over to fall asleep again and another hypnic jerk may happen again.

4.) Through a special machine the crew can enter one subject’s unconscious together. Is this something that people actually think could be possible? Has there ever been any record of people sharing dreams?

Very occasionally identical twins who share so much common experience will have dreams that are very similar. Also people who share their waking experiences and tell each other about how they feel about it will have similar dreams on the same night. The next day one can finish the dream story the other is telling because they have had the same dream. None of this is magic or even science. We can know WHEN y

I can't wait for the Egg puppet master to give his show.
Pen and ink with watercolour. A5 size. Click to enlarge.

Card 46 fresh off the press.
Woodcut 20cm x 30cm. Click to enlarge.

I think the whole Omega-3 craze is bullshit.
Woodcut with digital colour. 20cm x 30cm. Click to enlarge.

Card 50...half way there.
Brushpen and digital colour. 21cm x 14cm. Click to enlarge.

The other London Eye.
Pen and ink with watercolour 21cm x 15cm.Click to enlarge.

The Murmura is a slippery beast.
Pen and ink with watercolour 21cm x 15cm. Click to enlarge.