Is black black or is black white?

As we’ve seen, nothing in Etymology is black and white. More so with black and white. Words like “blank” and “bleak” can be “black or dark” or “pale and colourless”. Were it up to etymologists, racism would be literally obsolete.

This confusion traces its roots to Germania, whose people couldn’t decide what colour to associate with “burning”. The Germanic word for “burning” was “black”. A thing while burning shone brightly, but it also turned dark black. So, when the Germanic word “black” traveled to English, it could mean both dark, and pale. The French then trotted along, adding a useless letter as they usually do, and spelt it “blank”. Eventually black (dark) and blank (pale) came to mean opposites.

Source: RandomInterestingFacts.com

In true spirit of etymology though that’s not all. One could argue, if one is not already lacking friends, that ““blank” can also mean a void or nothing”. Yes, and when you commit to that, you realize the blankness you see when you close your eyes is black. But, a blank sheet of paper is (ordinarily) white. And that’s still not all, the word “bleach” is derived from the Germanic word “black”, but it means to make things pale.

Did we just solve racism? No, we just bought something extremely tangential into the discussion because how else can you organically discuss etymology. But the important thing is, we were smug about it and made it seem more important than it actually is.