Colors!

We are back with a Reader’s Request. What makes Americans see Red or Blue?

{Reader’s Request is now Ask Me Anything}

Thank you for your continued support of Okay History.

We are back with another Reader’s Request, this time from Kevin. We understand that Kevin has a history degree. We know he likes pie. We also know he likes Rye. We can likely presume he likes to consume both at the same time.

Kevin asks:

When did everyone begin dividing the country into red and blue colors?  

That’s a great question, Kevin! Thanks for asking, unapproached by us, entirely motivated by your interests.  

GANGLAND!

If you didn’t know that everyone in the United States refers to our political divide of left and right by the colors red and blue, we say WELCOME!

Living under that rock must have been so oppressive. You are safe now.

The easiest way to explain why colors are the foundation of how we view ourselves and each other, let’s take a stroll back to 1988 when Kevin and I were dominant athletes in our respective suburban Catholic school recreational leagues.

On Tax Day of that year, the film Colors debuted. The movie featured warring gangs in Los Angeles and the police sworn to stop them. Dennis Hopper directed. It was the first time the Bloods and the Crips were featured in film. For readers who don’t know- Bloods and Crips are gangs and they have respective colors: red (Bloods) and blue (Crips).

A young Sean Penn, who maybe was married to Madonna at the time, starred as the young hotshot cop on the beat, with Robert Duvall playing the old veteran. Duvall’s character spent years cultivating the beat and keeping a finger on the vibe in the community, while we assume Penn’s character ate Playdough as a kid.

SPOILER ALERT - HE DIES!

Ruining the plot, Duvall is killed because Penn’s character is a meathead who spray-paints the faces of gang members and crashes police cars. Of course, when Bobby is breathing his last breath, having taken a bullet meant for his idiot partner, Sean cries and vows to be different.

In the end, Penn becomes the old veteran, and his new partner, some random actor, becomes the meathead. I guess we can take comfort that Sean might get what is coming to him with a misplaced bullet.

Colors grossed $46M off a $10M budget. It was wildly successful despite Mario Lopez, Damon Wayans, this ginger, and Don Cheadle playing gang members. What a country.

MY COLORS!

I use this ridiculous example to show the silliness of how we explain and arguably, further divide, our country.

Describing states and political views as Red and Blue has been chiefly a 21st-century invention, but it does have a long history. Reconstruction Republicans used the color blue for no other reason than that it was the color they picked.

Fast forward and the invention of the television machine, network news helped Americans visualize the elections won by Presidents Carter and Regan by coloring them red for Democrats and blue for Republicans. One network person referred to Reagan’s sweeping 1984 victory that made the United States look like a giant swimming pool. There’s a deep-end or a drowning joke here that I can’t find.

BUSH LEAGUE!

Before the 2000 election, each network made up its own color rules but stuck with the template of red and blue. It made sense since those are two of the three colors in the American flag, in case you were wondering why we didn’t use black and gold at this point.

We don’t live in Steelers country, people.

But the 2000 election was so close and the internet machine so relatively new that media outlets organically consolidated around the idea of choosing the color for each party, despite the fact the party never officially adopted them.

To help visualize what it meant for George W. Bush, who would win the election with the direct help of the Supreme Court, every media outlet presented the map of the United States and labeled states Bush won as red and states that Gore won as blue.

The color explanation resonated with people, presumably because everyone watched Don Cheadle as a gang member in Colors and thought this dude was the real deal.

Like that, the toothpaste then exploded out, and we will be unable to shove it back into the tube.

NOT OUR COLORS!

In 2004, Bush won states where the Democrats held seats in the Senate. To me, this election solidified the entire color and probably motivated a lot of goobers to vote.

Bush became the first president ever to win without one electoral vote from the northeast. That includes Rhode Island! That area of the country is solid blue, and has been since. But heck, even Donald Trump won an electoral vote in that region both times he was on ballot.

There are examples of this throughout Congress. We even investigate blue and red congressional districts. I think everyone can agree, this is how we commonly refer to states and ideas. Although we refuse to do it when it comes to ranking states.

These descriptions spill into everyday life. I regularly read how investors who want to make money invest in red states because red states like investors. On the other hand, if you wish to have a better education, you’d better move to a blue state, because blue states are smarter.

Take a nonpartisan nonprofit, the National Governors Association, founded in 1908, and the absurd lengths they took with this idea. Over a hundred years later, they changed the brand colors from gold and blue to purple and gray.

Everything is a mix of red and blue and black and white, and my goodness, please punch me in the face.

Much like Hooper’s movie, we seem to play the same roles as Duvall and Penn, with the same predicted outcomes where Don Cheadle tries to murder us but hits the wrong guy.

It’s funny when party leaders or politicians complain about the media and then turn around and do interviews with Red State or take donations from Act Blue, forgetting who really invented the concept.

It doesn’t matter who is doing the talking on either side. What matters is that you identify with a side. Unfortunately, you must choose or suffer the consequences of not participating.

Are you red, or are you blue? (It’s funny to remember back when both party mascots had red and blue in their color scheme, now they have spray painted them one color.)

THESE COLORS DON’T RUN!

I don’t think this concept will ever change unless we wise up and ditch the way we elect congressional representatives, along with the electoral college. We need to change something that doesn’t inherently divide us into gangs wandering the streets with Mario Lopez looking for someone else to hurt.

We have an election coming up in the fall, and already we have our predictions on the presidential election. Which states will flip, turn blue to red, or red to blue?

Do you think it will get any better?

Barack Obama gave his breakthrough speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. He famously addressed the color issue:

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats.

He claimed this really wasn’t the case.

Maybe he didn’t watch Colors!

Four years later, he went on to win the White House, where according to those same pundits, he flipped North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio from red to blue.

But in Obama’s State of the Union speech in 2016, he recognized the divide between blue and red ideologues, something beyond just colors. There’s a deeply entrenched mindset that sees nothing but red when it comes to elections, the pandemic response, and Supreme Court nominees, to name a few.

I just hope these Sean Penn lookalikes don’t end up killing us Robert Duvalls. If so, roll the credits on the United States,

Thanks, Kevin. Here’s Ice T’s song that perfectly describes what it means to be in a gang above all else.