Do you dream in black and white?

When I was at school, it became known in the playground as a matter of fact that everybody dreams in black and white. When some of us tried to contradict this by saying that we dreamed in colour, the retort was that we only think we dream in colour because we can't believe that we actually dream in black and white. Our brains fill in the colour later to help us cope with the strangeness of it. In which case, I wondered, how do scientists know that we dream in black and white, if all that they can rely on is people's reports of their dreams? But facts, apparently, were facts, and we were living in a reverse Wizard of Oz world: colour in the real world and black and white in the dream.  Somehow this strange belief has persisted with me even though I know I experience myself as dreaming in colour. I doubted myself so badly that before writing this post I looked it up: do we dream in black and white? The answer is that only a small percentage of people do, and probably it's because they grew up watching black and white television. As television moved into colour, more people reported dreaming in colour. The only dream I am certain I ever had in black and white was a nightmare so disturbing I have never forgotten it, about a frail white girl with long pale hair and a long white dress, sitting in an old-fashioned wheelchair. Before my eyes, the wheelchair folded and folded with her still sitting inside it until both the girl and the wheelchair disappeared.  Last night I dreamt that I was lost in Amsterdam. I called for help and a crowd of people ran out to assist me. When I woke up I thought back over the dream and I realised something: every single person in that crowd I had dreamed up was white. Maybe I only noticed this because before bed last night, following the news of the death of Chadwick Boseman, I had watched Black Panther for the first time, the Marvel(ous) superhero film set in the fictional African country of Wakanda, which was groundbreaking because almost every character in it is Black. I tried to remember if I ever dream about Black people. I realised that I do if they are people I know, or celebrities - I remember a particularly vivid dream in which I had a vicious fight with Scary Spice (I won). But when it comes to my dream imagination, the people I create who don't really exist, from what I can recall, my inner world is entirely white. I find this disturbing. My outside world is not all white. While my immediate family is white, my extended family is diverse, and I live in London, surrounded by people of colour all the time. And I'm a writer. When I'm working, I create worlds populated by people of all backgrounds. But it seems that, left to its own devices, my mind will only produce white people.  I don't know why this is. I don't like what it says about me. One possibility is that everyone I dream about is an extension of myself - that's certainly an interpretation of dreams that I have heard - but I don't have any difficulty dreaming men. Have I othered Black people that much? I think back to those people having black and white dreams after watching black and white television. Do my dreams reflect what I've been taught about the world by films and television and the wider culture, which is that it is by default white, with Black people and other people of colour the exception? If the culture changes, will I have Wakanda dreams? Or is that shifting too much responsibility off myself? Is responsibility even the right word? What could be less conscious than a dream?  How about you? Do you dream in black and white?  ***  My online storytelling show A LA CARTE is part of this year's Amsterdam Fringe! Six filmed stories featuring myself and fellow storyteller Milda Varnauskaite will be delivered to your inbox from Monday September 7th, followed by a live Zoom show on Sunday September 13th, 8.15pm CET. Details and tickets here.