Black and White

This article is about the color black; for other uses, see Black (disambiguation).

Black is a color with several subtle differences in meaning.

Color or light

Black can be defined as the visual impression experienced in directions from which no visible light reaches the eye. (This makes a contrast with whiteness, the impression of any combination of colors of light that equally stimulates all three types of color-sensitive visual receptors.)

Pigments that absorb light rather than reflect it back to the eye "look black". A black pigment can, however, result from a combination of several pigments that collectively absorb all colors. If appropriate proportions of three primary pigments are mixed, the result reflects so little light as to be called "black".

This provides two superficially opposite but actually complementary descriptions of black. Black is the lack of all colors of light, or an exhaustive combination of multiple colors of pigment. See also Primary colors

In physics, a black body is a perfect absorber of light, but by a rule derived by Einstein it is also, when heated, the best emitter! Thus, the best radiative cooling, out of sunlight, is by using black paint, though it is important that it be black (a nearly perfect absorber) in the infrared as well.

In elementary science far Ultraviolet light is called "black light" because, unseen per se, it causes many minerals and other substances to fluoresce.

Usage, symbolism, colloquial expressions

In the Western world, black is most often used with a negative connotation. The reasons for this are various, but the most widely accepted explanations are that night is experienced by humans as negative and dangerous. A secondary reason is that stains are most visible as dark additions to pale materials. In traditional class-based Western cultures "pale" skin indicated genteel domestic or intellectual indoor-work as opposed to rough outdoor labor in the fields. Aspects of this black/white opposition are not unique to the West, as, for example in the Indian varna system. African and African-American writers such as Frantz Fanon, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, and Ralph Ellison in particular identify a number of negative symbolisms surrounding the word "black", arguing that the good vs. bad dualism associated with white and black provide prejudiced connotations to color metaphors for race.

• A "black day", in these cultures, would refer to a sad or tragic day. The Romans already marked fasti days with white stones and nefasti days with black.
  • e.g. the Black September in Jordan refers to a month in which thousands were killed.
  • Black Monday, stock market crash on October 19, 1987
  • Black Tuesday, stock market crash on October 29, 1929 which is the start of the Great Depression.
  • Black Wednesday caused Britain to pull out of the ERM.
  • Black Thursday, stock market crash on October 24, 1929
  • Black Friday, various tragic events.
• many poems and songs use the word black negatively (e.g. "Paint It Black" (Rolling Stones), "Baby's In Black" (Beatles), "Black Eyed Dog" (Nick Drake).
• In these cultures, the color black is often used in painting, film, and literature to evoke a sense of the fear or to symbolize death. It has also been adopted as a symbolic color of the Halloween festival.
• In English heraldry, black means darkness, doubt, ignorance, and uncertainty. (The American Girls Handy Book, p. 370)
• Black is often a color of mourning. Historically, widows and widowers were expected to wear black for a year after the death of their spouses.
• Black comedy is a form of comedy dealing with morbid and serious topics.
• Black magic is an evil form of magic, often connected with death.
• A blacklist is a list of undesirable persons or entities.
• Evil witches are sterotypically dressed in black and good fairies in white. Melodrama villains are dressed in black and heroines in white dresses. In many Hollywood Westerns, bad cowboys wear black hats while the good ones wear white. Funeral dress is black, wedding gowns are white.
• In computer security, a blackhat is an attacker with evil intentions.
• The black market is illegal.
• Blackmail is illegal and is perceived as immoral.
• The black sheep of the family is the ne'er-do-well.
• The infamous "black hole of Calcutta."
• To blackball them is to block them from being admitted.
• Black thoughts are wicked ones.
• A black mood is a bad one (e.g. Winston Churchill's depression, which he called "my black dog").
• A black cat often means bad luck.
• If you sink the black eight-ball in billiards, you lose. (The ball with which you sink all others is the white cue ball.)
• A black mark against you is a bad thing.
• A black-hearted person is mean and unloving.
• Black propaganda is the use of known falsehoods, partial truths, or masquerades in propaganda to confuse an opponent.
• Similarly, blackhats are malevolent hackers while whitehats are the good ones.

However, black can have positive symbolism.

• In the Maasai tribes of Kenya and Tanzania, the color black is associated with rain clouds, becoming a symbol of life and prosperity.
• In Western fashion, black is considered reliably stylish. This seems to be for reasons of contrast with the white skin (conversely, white t-shirts or suits are always stylish among African-Americans).
  • The colloquialism "the new black" is a reference to the latest trend or fad, on the basis that black is always fashionable.
• Black is seen as a color of seriousness and authority.
  • Many priests of the older religious denominations traditionally wear black.
  • The beltzak ("blacks" after their uniform) are the riot control units of the Basque Autonomous Police
  • Anarchist groups around the world have adopted black as a symbol of their movement.
• To say one's accounts are "in the black" is used to mean that one is free of debt.
  • (Being "in the red" is to be in debt—in traditional bookkeeping, negative amounts, such as costs, were printed in red ink, and positive amounts, like revenues, were printed in black ink, so that if "the bottom line" is printed in black, the firm is profiting.)
• The most sought-after rank in any martial art is a black belt.
• Cathar Perfects wore black (Cathars viewed black as a color of perfection).
• Dreaming of a black cat, or a black cat walking towards you, means good luck.

Black can also be used in many neutral ways.

• The term black is often used in the West to denote race for persons whose skin color ranges from light to darker shades of brown. For a discussion of usage, see the main entry at Black (people) and Color metaphors for race.
• In arguments, things can be black-and-white, meaning that the issue at hand is dichotomized. However, this dualism is fraught with danger, as one may assign the colors "black and white" to bad and good, respectively.
• Black frequently symbolizes ambiguity, secrecy, and the unknown.
  • A black box is any device whose internal workings are unknown or irrelevant.
  • A black project is a secretive project, like Enigma Decryption, Narcotics, or police sting operations.
  • The blackshirts were Italian Fascist militias (negative for anti-fascists, but presumably positive for the original fascists themselves)
  • Some organizations are called "black" when they keep a low profile, like Sociétés Anonymes and secret societies.
• The term "black hole" is applied to collapsed stars. This term is metaphorical in the extreme, because few properties of black objects or black voids apply to black holes. However, light emitted within a black hole's event horizon cannot escape, hence a black hole cannot be directly observed.
• The national rugby team of New Zealand is called the All Blacks, in reference to their black outfits.
• Association football (soccer) referees traditionally wear all-black uniforms, however nowadays other uniform colors may also be worn.
• In auto racing, a black flag signals a certain driver to go into the pits.
• Black is also used for anarchist symbolism, sometimes split in diagonal with other colors for further symbolism. The plain black flag is explained as the opposite of a white flag signalling surrender. It is also sometimes an anarchist dress code, with a practical benefit of not attracting attention and making later identification of a subject difficult. This strategy referred to as a black bloc.
• In German politics 'black' is used colloquially to refer to the conservative parties CDU and CSU
• In ancient China, black was the symbol of North and Water, one of the main five colors. There is no negative or positive meaning associated with it.
• Black is the color of the snooker ball which has a 7-point value, and also the eighth billiard ball. In the game of eight ball, this ball is the ultimate object of the game, but, if accidentally sunk, means instant loss of the game.
• A polished black mirror is used for scrying, and is thought to help see into the paranormal world without interference or distraction.
• Members of the modern subculture of Goths dress predominantly in black.
• A large number of sports teams have uniforms designed with black colors - many feeling the color sometimes inparts a psychological advantage in its wearers. Among the more famous (or infamous) include the Oakland Raiders and Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL, the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA, and Inter Milan of the Serie A of the Italian soccer leagues.

Black pigments

• Carbon black
• Ivory black
• Mars black

See also

• List of colors

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For other uses, see White (disambiguation).

White is a color (more accurately it contains all the colors of the visible spectrum and is sometimes described as an achromatic color—black is the absence of color) that has high brightness but zero hue. The impression of white light can be created by mixing (via a process called "additive mixing") appropriate intensities of the primary color spectrum: red, green and blue, but it must be noted that the illumination provided by this technique has significant differences from that produced by incandescence (see below).

Color

Paint

In painting, white can be created by reflecting ambient light from a white pigment. White when mixed with black produces gray. To art students, the use of white can present particular problems, and there is at least one training course specialising in the use of white in art.

There are various white pigments. Lead white, also known as flake white, is the traditional white pigment, but it is not much used now as it is toxic. Non-toxic alternatives are zinc white and titanium white. They are made from zinc oxide and titanium dioxide respectively.

White light

Until Newton's work became accepted, most scientists believed that white was the fundamental color of light; and that other colors were formed only by adding something to light. Newton demonstrated that white was formed by combining the other colors.

In the science of lighting, there is a continuum of colors of light that can be called "white". One set of colors that deserve this description are the colors emitted, via the process called incandescence, by a black body at various relatively-high temperatures. For example, the color of a black body at a temperature of 2848 kelvins matches that produced by domestic incandescent light bulbs. It is said that "the color temperature of such a light bulb is 2848 K". The white light used in theatre illumination has a color temperature of about 3200 K. Daylight has a nominal color temperature of 5400 K (called equal energy white), but can vary from a cool red up to a bluish 25,000 K. Not all black body radiation can be considered white light: the background radiation of the universe, to name an extreme example, is only a few kelvins and is quite invisible.

Standard whites

Standard whites are often defined with reference to the International Commission on Illumination's (CIE's) chromaticity diagram. These are the D series of standard illuminants. Illuminant D₆₅, originally corresponding to a color temperature of 6,500 K, is taken to represent standard daylight.

Computers

Computer displays often have a color temperature control, allowing the user to select the color temperature (usually from a small set of fixed values) of the light emitted when the computer produces the electrical signal corresponding to "white". The RGB coordinates of white are 255 255 255.

Many of Apple Computer's products are white, such as the iPod, iMac, and iBook.

Usage, symbolism, colloquial expressions

In general, since white is opposite of black, it is often used with positive connotation. Many negative expressions with "black" have an equivalent positive expression with "white". For example, whitehat describes a person who is ethically opposed to the abuse of computer systems, in contrast with blackhat. White has also many other meanings:

• The term white is often used in the West to denote "race" for so-called Caucasian people, i.e. people of European/West Asian descent with light skin color, whose skin color actually ranges from pink to pale brown, and overlaps with some people that might be classified as "Blacks". For more details, see Whites.

• White noise, in acoustics, is a sibilant sound that is often a nuisance, although it can also be deliberately created for test purposes.

• Whitewash, figuratively, means an attempt to obscure the truth by issuing a blanket of lies. See propaganda.

• Whiteout is a weather condition in which visibility is reduced and surface definition lost in snowy environments.

• In Chinese and Indian tradition, white is the color of mourning, death, and ghosts.

• In English heraldry, white or silver (color) signified brightness, purity, virtue, and innocence. (The American Girls Handy Book, p.369)

• White is the traditional color of bridal dress in both western (European) and Japanese weddings. In Western weddings, a white dress is symbolic of purity (the bride has not engaged in pre-marital sex)

• White is often associated with Conservatism (as opposed to Communism), particularly in the years following World War I, with civil wars fought between "Reds" and "Whites", for instance the Civil War in Russia and the Civil War in Finland.

• A white flag is an international sign of either surrender, or truce, that is, it is a sign of peaceful intent, typically at time of war.

• A white paper can be an authoritative report on a major issue, as by a team of experts; a government report outlining policy; or a short treatise whose purpose is to educate (contrast position paper) industry customers. It is called white paper because it was originally bound in white.

• The white ribbon is worn by movements denouncing violence against women and against queer youth. It is also worn by some feminists and was a symbol for peace in Quebec, in the beginning of 2003, as part of the popular opposition to war on Iraq.

• To "show the white feather" is to display cowardice. In cockfighting, a white feather in the tail is considered a mark of inferior breeding. In Victorian England a purported coward would be presented with a white feather.

• White is also one of the two opponents in many board games of abstract strategy, such as go, chess, and checkers.

• In both the French and Russian Revolutions, white symbolized royalism. Arthur Charles Fox-Davies has argued that white can be considered a tincture in heraldry separate from its use to represent argent, and in fact the labels borne on the arms, crests and supporters of members of the British Royal Family other than the reigning sovereign are invariably shown as white. The color is also used extensively by the Roman Catholic pope.

See also

• List of colors