Black and white are two common words. White means bright and purity, black is darkness and evil, but not always. Sometimes the words are used differently. White hats and black hats represent the traditional meaning of the words. The hats are symbols of the good guys and the bad guys in American western movements. White hats and black hats had a real purpose in the early days of motion pictures. The early movies were made with no sounds. So the movie directors put a white hat on the hero and a black hat on his opponent, the bad guy in the story. A black sheep is a person who does things that are not accepted, that violate tradition. A black sheep is rejected because he brings shame to his group. A family may have a member who is thought of as a black sheep, a person who is not welcome at family gatherings. Black is also used in some expressions that describe good things. Feeling in the black, for example, is a good situation for anyone. It is a business expression. It means that the company is earning money. The store that makes profit is in the black. The expression comes from the color of ink that is used in the books that record a company's profits or losses. Profits are written in black ink, losses are written in red. So when someone says his business is in the red, he means it is losing money. White usually means something good. A white-collar job, for example, is the kind of job many people seek. It is a job where you work at the desk, using your brain instead of your muscles. Usually white-collar jobs pay more than blue-collar jobs. These jobs are where you don't use your muscles. Sometimes white is used in an expression that is not good. Whitewash is such an expression. At first whitewash meant to paint over something with white paint, making it look better but now whitewash has different meaning, to hide or cover up mistakes or falls. A newspaper might report, for example, that the investigation of the train accident is a whitewash because investigators did not really try to discover who was responsible. Some expressions use black and white together. Someone may say to you that your proposal sounds all right but he wants to see it in black and white. He wants to see your proposal in writing, black ink on white paper. Some people are said to see things only in black and white. Now this expression, black and white, represent opposite extremes, with no middle ground between them. Most issues in the world are not so simple as black and white. One side of an issue is not all white or good and the other side is not all black, wrong or evil. In the real world there are many gray areas where black and white are mixed to represent the true situation. The movie directors used a white hat to show the hero and black hat his opponent in