Color Wars (Retrospective Analysis)

It sounds like an old Nickelodeon Gas game-show that never took off. A team of contestants all wearing one of the primary colors run around through mazes and tunnels attempting to complete challenges, all the while being splattered with that infamous green goo. At Pembroke, it’s an attempt by the Pep Club to foster deeper grade and school ties.

Background

Color Wars began in 2007. The premise was simple: each grade is assigned a random color and they must immerse themselves in that color for an entire week. The grade competes with other grades in events like jeopardy, dodgeball, and hallway decorating. The winner of the most events wins. Honestly, I’m still a bit fuzzy on the prize (respect? a pizza party? DOUBLE WIN!). Seems simple enough, and it is.

But here are a few thoughts I had.

Mismanagement

Last year, in its inaugural season, Color Wars was a hit (except for the fact that the seniors cheated us out of first place. “This icy body…” was legitimate, “this television character…” was not.). The event fostered cooperation inside grades, hatred outside of grades, and allowed me to fill my closet with green shirts I’d never wear again (I haven’t felt this successful since 9th grade history!).

This year, things were a little different. The event was announced with little less than four days to spare. Instead of an entire week as per last year, Color Wars lasted a measly three days, with the culminating event now just dodgeball (Color Wars without trivia is like a hooker without syphilis). Green was dropped in favor of white (read below), which pissed off yours truly, who was excited to finally cleanse his closet of the distinct leprechaun influence. And finally, Color Wars II felt a lot like The Matrix Reloaded (lamer, darker, and milking an empty cashcow). This thought sets up the possibility of an interesting threequel to the Matrix; Matrix IV: Color Wars.

“Neo, you must wear your red on Tuesday!” says Morpheus.

“But, why?” (In slow-moving, Keanu Reeves voice).

“Because you… are… the… red one,” (In overly dramatic Morpheus voice).

*Sidenote: Don’t worry if you missed the humor on that one, only for me would that be considered funny.

Increase the Divide

For a school that claims to yearn for integration of the student body, to yearn for a student body lacking conflict, does forcing the different classes into a winner-takes-all type competition contradict that goal? I’ve always heard that nothing brings people together like a common enemy, but when we’re competing with three other groups of people, are we creating more enemies than it’s worth?

It could easily be argued that any attempt at team-building inevitably creates enemies to compete with, but I have to wonder if there aren’t alternate paths to take towards creating grade cohesiveness. But when I thought about it, the split-by-color method is even used in “top-of-the-line” leadership workshops (as Amy Winehouse said, “They tried to make me visit the workshops, but I’ve got a life, life, life…”), and it does do wonders to create coherent groups. But in an era of globalization where the cohesiveness of small groups is becoming decreasingly important, it’s pertinent to consider whether we’re selling ourselves short with events like Color Wars.

Racism

Yet for me, the concept of “Color Wars” evokes more than a contest between randomly-assigned colors. “Color Wars” is a conflict between people of different “color” and colors, not just in the ostensible, randomly-assigned sense. The idea that people of different colors should compete so that one group might be declared the “winner” by a seemingly-impartial judge seems full of racist undertones. This point is further emphasized by the colors chosen for this year: white, red, yellow, blue.

1. First, white isn’t a color because it has no hue.
2. Second, the fact that a grade’s color directly correlates with a skin color only accentuates the potential for confusion about the agenda behind Color Wars. It also leads to deepening the stereotypes. If the white team corresponds to caucasians, are yellow and red intended to do the same for other stereotypes?
3. Third, the “white” team, are you kidding me? Give it one more year and the freshman class will be donning their dark colors and decorating the hallways in support of the “black” team. That wouldn’t be bad, but at the point when a team can get in trouble for having signs that say “(our color) pride,” the colors should probably change. In the planning stage, did no one think to say, “Hey, you know what, maybe white ISN’T the best idea for grade’s color.”
4. Yes, you’re right, white clothing is probably easier to find. But come on, this is Pembroke Hill; everyone knows where a Target is.
5. Don’t try to tell me it’s patriotic, because there is no yellow in the American flag.

Yet, it has to be stated that initiating a racially-driven conflict was not the goal of Pep Club (or at least, I’m 99% sure). So the question to ask ourselves is, are the conflicts between race and color so deeply engrained from history that competition between people of different “colors” becomes acceptable on a behavioral and societal level?

Maybe I’m reading too deeply into this, I usually do. But I think to understand the phenomenon on a deeper level, the event itself has be questioned. As Joseph Barndt said in his 1991 book Dismantling Racism, “Brick by brick, stone by stone, the walls of individual, institutional, and cultural racism can be destroyed.” Sometimes I worry that, unintentionally, we’re just adding more bricks to the wall.

There were less jokes than usual. My apologies.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.