Colors and People

Colors and People

People come in different colors: their eyes, their skin. Colors have two interesting properties: they are contingent and they are active. Each person could have had a different color—in some possible world my eyes are brown and my skin black. And colors are active dispositions to produce color sensations—acts, in short.[1] They are therefore acts that could have been otherwise—my eyes and skin could have acted differently and it would still be me (and still human). But it is not true that I am free to be of a different color; I can’t choose to have a different eye or skin color. These things are outside the scope of my will, no matter how much I may desire them. True, I can paint my body and insert tinted contact lenses, but I can’t change the natural color of my skin or eyes. However, this inability is itself contingent: I could have been born with an ability to change my color at will. In some possible world I am like an octopus or cuttlefish in this respect: I can decide what color to be, optically or dermally. Suppose that in this world people change their color all the time to suit circumstances: they choose dark skin during the day to protect themselves from sunlight and light skin at night so they can be seen more easily. Or they might choose a mixture of dark and light for aesthetic reasons (good for mating). Or they might choose skin (and eye) color to indicate their political allegiances—black left-wing, white right-wing (I choose these colors at random). Then my question is this: would there be any color-based form of discrimination in this world? I venture to say not. Sometimes you are white, sometimes you are black; it is not part of your essence to be one color rather than the other. It is highly contingent, a matter of choice not destiny. You can see people in the process of changing color (it takes a few seconds). It would be ludicrous to harbor a prejudice in favor of one color over another (suppose we add a full palette of colors to this possible world). Yet the different colors might have different connotations, depending on their associations—such as political affiliation. But color in itself means nothing where human nature is concerned. It is entirely superficial. True, there might be some people in this world that form this prejudice—call them colorists—but they are generally regarded as completely irrational, if not outright bonkers. Some birds are red and others blue—so what? Nature has decided to paint some people in one color and others in another, but that’s all it is—paint. Superficial, skin-deep, contingent, possibly a matter of choice (in some possible world). People wear clothes of different colors, or apply make-up, but this tells you nothing of importance. I leave it to the reader to draw the obvious moral. Of course, this moral was obvious all along, but perhaps these thought experiments serve to vivify the lunacy.[2]

[1] See my “Are Colors Actions?’

[2] What if in some possible world the Europeans are all dark-skinned and the Africans are all light-skinned—surely a logical possibility? Would we have black supremacy on the part of Europeans? Probably (analytical philosophy has its uses). Let me note that there are white cats and black cats, rare and common respectively. No one makes a big deal out of this chromatic difference, and black cats have different meanings in different cultures, some regarding them as lucky and some unlucky. Why do people think the human species is different?  If I am accused of banality in making these points, I accept the charge; but sometimes the banal can escape attention.