We've been talking a lot about race in AS lately, and it got me thinking about how colors in general affect society. Every single color has its own connotation. White is associated with purity and cleanliness. It contains every color in the spectrum. Red can be anger or excitement or even love and romance. Green is the color of growth, nature, and money. It can symbolize harmony, or even jealously and greed. Blue symbolizes calmness and wisdom. Ask people and many would say that its their favorite color. While black is often noted as a sign of power or authority, and sometimes even evil. In the Western part of the world, it is the sign of mourning.
Colors are everywhere, and many companies use specific colors in their marketing because they believe it will attract certain types of customers. Color plays a key role in the success of advertising. Look at McDonald's. The two colors of their logo are a bright red and warm yellow. The bright red has the ability to appear closer than it truly is and grabs the customer's attention first. Then the warm yellow activates considerations of food, warmth, shelter, and physical comfort, encouraging the customer to come in and eat.
So if colors have the power to make you stop in and have a burger, can they influence how you view others? If the color white symbolizes purity and goodness, does that mean that all white people are good and pure? And that those who are not white, simply are not? Colors might affect your mood, but they should not affect your thinking. And I don't believe the connotations of colors should be completely at fault for the inequalities and tension between races. I think it's how society chooses to react to those colors that affects how we interact with each other.
