Why is black evil and white good?

Question

This trope appears everywhere in literature - _especially_ in fantasy. Everywhere you turn, _black_ means bad and _white_ means good. This is particularly true when applied to people, or the consequences of peoples' actions. _The Lord of the Rings_ does it. _The Chronicles of the Black Company_ does it. _Harry Potter_ does it. Less recently, _Paradise Lost_ does it. _Tekkonkinkreet_, _The Golden Age_, _Myst_, _The Belgariad_, _A Canticle for Leibowitz_, _Heart of Darkness_... in some respects, all of these use the color black to denote and describe which people are not worth trusting, and the consequences of their actions that hurt people. But if we go back far enough, with peculiarly higher frequency in the non-Western/European world, it seems to disappear as a relied-upon trope. Much of ancient Greek literature, for example, seems to entirely (or nearly entirely) ignore using black as a symbol for evil. Even some modern literature uses it as a neutral symbol, or just as a color signifying the presence of magic with no particular alignment; e.g., _The Sandman_. Its use as a reliable trope, then, seems to be maybe deceptively recent. To where should we trace the roots of its popularization in contemporary Western-style literature? (As an aside, I've thought about this question a lot. I'm hoping to find and learn something deeper than the fundamental notion, or basic Googleable ideas, esp. about its Western fantasy popularization.)

Answer 1

We often use the duality between black and white to represent good and evil. Its origin can be traced back to the Book of Genesis in which God separates the light from the darkness on the first day of Creation. There are continued examples of the light vs. darkness idea throughout the Bible, which as we know, was the road map for many people during the Dark/Middle Ages, which can account for the black and white symbolism idea. Moving from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance and to the Age of Enlightenment, it moved the way of thinking out of the normal religious period and into a new age of intellectualism, while the symbolism continued to remain and be used by writers and artists alike. 

You use the example of Harry Potter in your query above. If you take a name like Sirius Black and break it down to its individual parts, you find that his name is the combination of light and dark. Sirius is the brightest star in our sky yet Black is the darkest color on the spectrum. The character himself shines his brightness from within the darkness of his family’s history. A notorious family that produced many Slytherin house members, only for him to be the first Gryffindor in his family. Alfred, Lord Tennyson even described the star as “bickering into red and emerald”, Hogwarts house colors if you want to really dig deep. His cousins are notorious dark wizards yet he chose to fight for the good guys. His whole being is representative of the dichotomy of the light and the dark so bravo to Ms. Rowling for that incredible characterization. 

I hope this helps with your question! If you’d like to discuss further, please reach out!

Answer 2

I'm hesitant to add anything to Alexa's fantastic answer, but to underscore her point about it coming from the bible, at least some Eastern traditions have a different symbology for white and black, most notably that white is the color associated with death, so you would never see it at an Eastern wedding, for instance.