As we
open our eyes every morning, we see the colorful world: red flowers, the
blue sky, the yellow glory of sunrise, and so on. Fortunately, god had
created the world with countless colors, thus our eyes could be
satisfied with those various colors. Yet unfortunately, some colors
have been given characters and value-judgments by us human beings.
These stereotypes surrounding colors could be found in our daily life.
The most
obvious example is that in Chinese opera, white-face signals a wily man
while black-face represents justice. In this case, the color is used to
be a symbol for representing a character. Another example is in the
movie 「Psycho.」 The director used the ingenious and clever device of
color images to show shifts of the heroine』s mental state. At the
beginning of the movie, the heroine was still an innocent girl, and
there is a scene in which she wore a white bra. But after she stole
public funds and then had a date with her paramour at a hotel, the bra
she was wearing was changed into a black one. As the change in color
signals the presence of evil in her life.
Besides
being symbols, colors also have a strange relationship with gender.
When I was a little girl about three or four years old, my father
couldn』t help buying me pink or red clothes, notebooks, pencils, or
anything. Even now, while I go into the clothing store, the clothing
will be separated into two sections: men』s are usually black or gray,
while woman』s are pink or yellow or other bright colors. I think that
this kind of division helps distinguish between males and females. It
is not necessary to promote gender discrimination or other gender
problems.
Still, there is a more serious prejudice of color—discrimination of the
colored races. The Haoles of Hawaii tend to have a strong sense of
superiority about themselves. Most of them regard their white skin as a
clear and innocent representation and think of the colored races as
dirty. This sense of superiority also exists in the society of the
yellow races. As the joke goes, white people are like the bread that is
not baked enough and black people are over-baked bread. In other words,
only the yellow-skinned races are 「just right.」 Such prejudice against
the colored races could be nothing but a joke, but it also could be more
serious, even cause a war. The American Civil War is one such war waged
upon the issue of race.
We all know that people are born equal, but most of us still judge
people by their color of skin inevitably. We should know that the
colors of skin are merely colors in nature. It would be strange to damn
the colors of nature. To lessen the prejudice, we should learn to
appreciate colors in the universe and also be tolerant to the different
colors of skin.