"Trei, Peter" wrote:
From: Anonymous[SMTP:nobody@remailer.privacy.at] Peter Trei wrote:
I can state from personal experience that Silver Nitrate solution will produce stains on skin which gradually blacken in the light, and don't come off till your skin wears off.
But what happens when it is applied to Lakeesha Aswamba's finger? Would the staining be visible?
I'll ignore the possibility that there is a racist implication behind this....
Who said it had to be black, or be Silver Nitrate? The example I saw used a purple dye. If you actually knew any blacks (I'm using that word instead of the currently PC 'African-American' because it's skin color that's under discussion, and the discussion applies to people outside the US as well), you'd know that the palmar side of the hand and fingers are much lighter than the back.
I was living in Kenya during a general election there about 20 years ago. (I could have voted but chose not to, so Daniel Arap Moi got in without any help from me :-) If I remember correctly there was some sort of dye used. The general atmosphere of that election was, of course, very different from a British one (I've never been in the US at election time). The police, who were supervising things, get a lot less respect and a lot more fear than ours do. And the voters were (in the district I lived in) almost all poor farmers who would be very unlikely to sue, or even complain loudly, at any apparent misbehaviour from a government official. No doubt if you tried the same trick in the US someone would claim that the dye was carcinogenic, or that the blotchy colour had caused them to look bad at an interview & lose the job or something.
Also, if you want to get high tech, use a fluorescent dye mixed with DMSO. It'll penetrate deep into the skin, and be visible under UV (no cosmetic objections). I suspect it'd take weeks to wear off.
Doesn't have to be "high-tech", ordinary Indian ink would do (IIRC that is just a fine suspension of carbon in water & a little alcohol?). Anything that glows in the dark will lead to accusations about cancer. And yes, if there are any white supremacist tunnel-rats reading this from a secret sheep farm somewhere in Idaho, black dye does show up on African skin, even on the back of the hand. I can't think of anyone I know or meet regularly whose skin is actually black in colour. Ken