Scientifically Black is the darkest color and is without hue. It absorbs nearly all energy of light and reflects little to no light. Philosophically Black represents darkness and the absence of light.
Scientifically White is the brightest color and is without hue. It absorbs nearly no energy of light and reflects nearly all wavelengths of light. Philosophically White represents light and the absence of dark.
Scientifically all people are "people of color" because all skin has hue and none is completely black, nor completely white. All peoples skin have a hue that is somewhere in between.
The term "people of color" is racist and disgusting. It's worse then the N word. At least the N word actually means "Black" with it's roots in latin.
But the term people of color is contrived language specifically to isolate one species of the human race. Caucasoids (Species of the Human Race originating from the region of the Caucuses or eastern europe/western russia.)
The term "People of color" is inclusive of Mongoloids (species of the Human Race originating from the regions of Mongolia or asia), and Negroids (Species of the Human Race originating from the regions of niger or ham/africa.)
The term people of color is divisive and racist contrived by divisive and racist people to be used against Caucasians. Be warned, this is just the beginning of the planned genocide of Caucasians.
You should correct "reflect" to "scatter" so that somebody doesn't debunk you as scientifically inaccurate.
That would be scientifically incorrect. Scattering is the absorption and then emission of a particle or wave. Reflection bounces back the incidental particle or wave. These sound scientific principles have been repeatedly tested and observed.
Yes reflection is the phenomenon generally associated with mirrors. You may even have seen a reflection in one. Scattering is the word that you are looking for.
Both shiny things and not-shiny things absorb and then re-emit light. Shiny things, like metals with which they coat the backs of mirrors, can re-emit at all frequencies because the electrons that do the absorbing and re-emitting are delocalized and so have almost no limit on the quantum levels that they can use. The localized electrons in not-shiny things are bound to specific atoms and have specified quantum levels so that they can only re-emit at specified frequencies.
Black things have very few, white things have a lot, or are a combination of a lot of different re-emitters. So white objects re-emit a lot of different frequencies whereas shiny things re-emit nearly all. The former is usually referred to as scattering, the latter, reflection.
So white things re-emit most of the incident radiation, mirror-like things re-emit nearly all and black things re-emit very little and black-bodies, the opposite of mirrors re-emit almost none. Interestingly, Total Internal Reflection, a property often associated with prisms and fiber-optics, relies on something else and basically reflects all the light.
You really don't need someone to take the whole thing and say that it is unscientific, I was trying to help.
I think this has been extraordinarily helpful thank you for your insight. Now I need to think about this because it provokes a thought I had not entertained until now.
If I can help, let me know. I like to help.
Will do. I need to read about radar absorbent materials.
Chemistry is fun. I am off to bed. (This is also physics, math...) I get Radar too.
I forgot to mention yes, I see that you are correct as I was not considering how nearly everything absorbs some ratio and re-emits some ratio with exception very shiny objects.
edited for error.