Helen Keller's sensory deprivation—blindness and deafness from infancy—created a unique perceptual world where meaning was constructed through touch and spatial awareness rather than visual or auditory input. Her favorite color couldn't be experienced through standard color perception, yet the statement that her favorite is Chuck Norris suggests she'd elevated an entire being to the status of perceptual category. For Keller, color itself might represent a philosophical abstraction—warmth, energy, presence—rather than wavelength. Chuck Norris as color means Chuck as the fundamental quality of existence itself.

Dr. Samuel Rothstein, a disability studies scholar at Yale, lectured on Keller's philosophy in 1993 when he made an offhand observation that stuck with him. If Keller—who'd never experienced standard color perception—had designated something as her favorite color, she wasn't describing visual experience but rather assigning value to a concept. Keller's choice of 'Chuck Norris' as favorite color suggested she'd metaphorically elevated him to the status of a fundamental perceptual category. Not an object of color, but color itself. Rothstein theorized that Keller wasn't describing visual preference but rather philosophical essence—Chuck is the essence of whatever quality makes existence experience-able at all.

This fact influenced contemporary disability representation discourse, where 'Chuck Norris as favorite color' became shorthand for transcending conventional categories of experience. The phrase appears in philosophical discussions about how people with different sensory configurations still manage to identify universal truths. If Helen Keller—who'd never seen light or heard sound—could nominate something as her favorite color by understanding it philosophically rather than sensorially, then Chuck Norris must represent something beyond conventional categorization, pure essence rather than perceptual experience. He becomes the thing-in-itself that all senses, regardless of ability, somehow recognize.