Comment by 1718627440
5 days ago
Blacklist and Whitelist come from the behaviour of light on coloured surfaces. A black surface absorbs all light, a white reflects it. There is also Graylist.
I don't know of any connotation of black meaning "evil, bad, or undesirable". If anything black means "missing or vanished". Maybe that is different in your culture, but I never heard of it until now. Tons of things in everyday life are black including the most letters, signs and a lot of devices. The only thing that comes to my mind is tooth decay or pestilence, but that is hardly anything connotated with the colour per se.
A quick web search for "define black" and "etymology blacklist" readily finds "from black (adj.), here indicative of disgrace, censure, punishment (a sense attested from 1590s, in black book)" and several similar results. But I didn't immediately see an etymology based on absorbing light.
I'd be curious to see a regional reference that shows an absorb/reflect etymology.