Conclusion—A Past That Ranks Colors and Refuses to Mix, and a Colorful Future

This chapter concludes that people learn color categorization from childhood through their living environments, education, and laws, which shape their unique “color culture.” The perspective of diversity is essential to understanding diverse colorful cultures shaped by differing lights, vegetation, histories, and languages. While some differences exist, the author believes most humans share universal traits like trichromatic vision, and will die. Cultures create variations in behavior depending on the environment. The author’s interest in color started with curiosity about foods in New York. Diversity arises from humans’ hardware-installing software depending on environments over time. However, as humans share concepts of basic colors, understanding is possible across differences. The chapter discusses links between categorization, Social Darwinism, and eugenics, and the unethical sorting of humans by race. It concludes communication across cultures is enhanced by recognizing that judgments based on skin color cause hurt universally.