I think it is worthwhile to examine why westerns chose to use the symbolism of black and white hats.
The symbolism is extremely obvious and pre-dating even the “discovery of America”.
There are some discussions to be had about different symbolisms but treating it as a reductive to always good or bad well, calling it childish is an insult to children.
White is the color most representative of presence of light, while black is the color most representative of absence.
In many religions, light represents truth, while darkness represents absence of truth.
The good guys shine the light, bad guys cover it up.
No reference to race is required for this well known symbolism.
The old westerns were shot in black and white, so it was easy to have the white hats be the good guys and the black hats be the bad guys. Easy identification by the audience as to what was going on.
My sincere apologies for growing up in a Christian culture, making me an evil colonialist by birth. How can I make amends?
Boogeyman - we are talking about the colors black and white here. Get off your high horse!
I am not on a high horse, but you picked a belief out of nowhere as if it was particularly significant to the topic, so boogeyman seemed an appropriate characterization.
I don't know what you mean by "judging people by appearances", how is that relevant? I haven't read the bible, I personally ma not a Christian. I just grew up in Christian culture. And infosec presumably also predominantly developed in that culture, as it was dominating the Western world for wuite a while.
I don't think the bible says brides should be dressed in white, nevertheless it seems to be a common Christian tradition.
So no, it was not "picked out of nowhere", after all Christian religion was what has defined good and evil for hundreds of years now, in the world in which infosec developed.
The color white as I am sure you know is not a color, it's what you see when all spectrums of visible light are observed. Similarly, black is the lack of reflected light. You're typically at increased danger when you lack visible light, that said human skin is never actual pure black. To an European person it is relatively much darker but with african societies you will hear lighter skinned peoppe called white. Treating people worse because their relative skin tone approximates lack of light more than your skin is not unique to west european culture.
We are talking about hats, old western hats. It was never a religious thing. Saying religion has something to do with it even when similar patterns of color preference are seen throught most cultures makes me think you have an adverse bias against religion affecting your opinion. But to your point, this bias is not uncommon within infosec or western tech in general. I criticized you simply because I find the ignorance and justification of blaming entire groups even for other people's biases without a modicum of factuality was something I felt was unfair and to be honest less than what I expect of well studied intellectuals such as the typical HN user. That said, apologies for coming of snarky and judgy.