DailyDirt: People Colored

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Nov 8th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

There used to be Crayola crayons labeled "flesh" -- which was re-named to "peach" in 1962, and now Crayola has a pack of eight crayons specifically called "multicultural" that includes: black, sepia, peach, apricot, white, tan, mahogany and burnt sienna. However, there are other colors that have been used to label people, like red and blue. The history of these color associations isn't so black and white. Here are just a few interesting links on how we've changed looking at colors over the years.

Red states and blue states didn't always refer to Republican and Democratic electorates, respectively. Red and blue were frequently used to describe American political affiliations, but which color represented which party was not consistent until relatively recently (ca. 2000) -- for instance, during the Cold War, who wanted to be described as "red" in American politics? [url]
Studies of how linguistic descriptions of color affect the way people perceive colors have rekindled the idea that language can shape how people think. And that's doubleplusgood. [url]
Babies used to be dressed up in all white, but then little boys started only wearing blue... and girls would wear only pink. Again, this convention wasn't settled on for a long time, and it could have easily gone the opposite way (boys in pink, girls in blue). The real loss is in gender neutral colors for children's clothing.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: babies, blue, color, crayons, democrat, perception, red, republican
Companies: crayola

10 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 8 Nov 2012 @ 5:27pm

Check this out: "1927 Baby Boys Wore Pink"
http://www.newstrick.com/2012/04/1927-baby-boys-wore-pink.html
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Nov 2012 @ 5:28pm

a crayon labeled flesh!
that sounds like it's teaching kids to become cannibals or something. yuck.

kids can dip their flesh crayons in glue and munch away.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pirate Prats, 8 Nov 2012 @ 6:46pm

The red/blue was flipped in the 2000 election. It's the tradition way with 'left' parties being red and 'right' being blue.
But Fox changed it in 2000.

For a REALLY funny thing, we've all heard about 'purple states' (Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Virginia, etc were Purple States this election), What happens when you get a guy barely out of his teens, who has most of his political experiance as a candidate in Canada running a US party? Yes, he decides that the party color should be PURPLE, because that's what it was in Canada...

This happened with the US Pirate Party, while the person in question was SUPPOSED to be working on statutes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Andrew Norton (profile), 8 Nov 2012 @ 6:52pm

Actually, the baby colours is wrong. before the 30s/40s, red/pink was for boys, and blue was for girls, because red was a strong colour, for blood and war and such. Blue was considered a soft colour.
QI told me so - https://sites.google.com/site/qitranscripts/transcripts/7x07
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Leigh Beadon (profile), 9 Nov 2012 @ 10:01am
  
  Re:
  That was my first reaction too (and QI rules!) but if you read the full article it's clear that they are well aware of the switching around and it was never quite as clear-cut as that QI episode made it sound. At the same time that some were promoting pink for boys, blue for girls, others were promoting the reverse and others still were saying it had nothing to do with gender and should be based on hair colour and stuff like that.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Andrew Norton (profile), 9 Nov 2012 @ 11:03am
    
    Re: Re:
    I think it's the opposite.
    I think the smithsonian piece focuses more on a few personal choices after the event (like FDR in a white dress 140 years ago) rather than contemporary accounts in the media showing surprise.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Andrew D. Todd, 9 Nov 2012 @ 1:12am

Slightly Off-Topic
Wikipedia has a table of Crayola colors, with 24-bit equivalents, so that you can paste them into a paint program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Crayola_crayon_colors
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AG Wright (profile), 9 Nov 2012 @ 4:08am

Colors for kids
Personally back in the day when I had babies I usually dressed them in yellow. Leave them guessing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 11 Nov 2012 @ 6:21pm
  
  Re: Colors for kids
  The Yellow Ranger has traditionally been female.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
JJ Joseph, 9 Nov 2012 @ 2:32pm

Red vs Blue?
The commies will always be "the reds". Their flags are always red, and they self-identify as reds. Everywhere in the world, Conservative parties are blue, as in "blue blooded". So, yes, it is odd that the Republicans label themselves as the red party.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]