Beyond White: Colours Through African-Asian Eyes

In the mainstream global imagination, white is often treated as the apex of purity, light, and moral clarity. From bridal gowns and heavenly clouds to hospital walls and holy robes, white is bestowed with virtues that feel almost universal. Yet, these associations are not innate — they are culturally constructed, often through Eurocentric lenses. When viewed through African and Asian perspectives, colour tells a much more nuanced, layered story.

The Problem with the “White = Pure” Paradigm

Let’s begin by asking: who decided white was the symbol of purity? Western traditions have long glorified white as virtuous — the colour of angels, new beginnings, and sanitised spaces. But in doing so, they often cast other colours — particularly darker ones — as the "other," connoting sin, danger, or disorder. In a post-colonial world where race and power are intimately intertwined, these associations are not just symbolic. They echo through social hierarchies, beauty standards, and institutional biases.

African Perspectives: Colour as Spiritual Dialogue

In many African cultures, colour is not aesthetic; it is spiritual, historical, and communal. Among the Yoruba, white is associated with death and the ancestors — not purity in the moral sense, but a sacred stillness. Red, often dismissed in the West as aggressive, is vibrant with life force (àse), blood, energy, and transformation.

Similarly, Kente cloths from Ghana are not just beautiful fabrics. Every colour has meaning. Black signifies spiritual maturity and ancestral wisdom. Gold represents royalty, not because it is "shiny and clean," but because of its earthly richness and depth. Colour is symbolic, but never moralised.

Asian Views: White as Emptiness, Mourning, and Potential

In many parts of Asia, white is the colour of mourning. In Chinese, Indian, and Japanese traditions, white is worn at funerals, symbolising loss, detachment, and the return to nothingness. This is not a negative association — it is a profound one. White is a threshold between life and death, the void that precedes creation.

In Buddhism, white can be a colour of potential — a blank slate — but not inherently virtuous. It is neutral, and it must be filled with intentional action. Red, saffron, and gold — bold, earth-connected colours — dominate spiritual iconography. These colours, rooted in the body and the land, are seen as transformative, not merely decorative.

Colour, Colonisation, and Control

When colonial forces imposed European values on African and Asian territories, they brought with them not only guns and religion, but a hierarchy of aesthetics. White skin became idealised. White clothing symbolised civility. White spaces denoted order. These ideals erased indigenous understandings of colour and imposed a rigid binary: light versus dark, clean versus dirty, civilised versus savage.

These imposed norms continue today, embedded in global beauty industries, design preferences, and even the language we use to describe people and their morality.

Reclaiming Colour as Culture

Across Africa and Asia, movements are emerging to reclaim colour from colonial moralising. Traditional garments, festivals, and art forms are celebrated not as exotic relics, but as dynamic expressions of identity. The vibrant colours of Holi, the deep indigo of Nigerian adire, the ochres of the Himba people, the rich greens of Southeast Asian jungles — these hues are being reinterpreted through modern eyes that are no longer beholden to whiteness as the ultimate symbol.

To reclaim colour is not to reject white — but to dethrone it from its assumed moral superiority.

So we ask ourselves:

Is a colour ever just a colour — or is it always a perspective? And if so, whose perspective has been painting our world all along