In keeping with uncle Joe's YOU AIN'T BLACK comment.

[Aloha_Shooter]

White's actually an absence of color.

Yes and no.
If you look at visual color spectrum white and black color doesnt exist. However,white and black is a color which white will reflect majority of light specturum, and black absorbs all colors. Black and white crayon/marker does exist.

Translucent is not a color.

Nailed it.

White reflects the full spectrum of color. Diversity, baby!

So it depends on what you're talking about in terms of color. When discussing absorption of light, white is indeed an absence of colors (in other words, all light on the object in question is reflected to the receiver or at least enough light in all spectra that it overloads your receptors resulting in a perception of "white"). When discussing emission of light, white is the emission of all spectra or enough of each that it overloads your receptors as discussed before. "Black" is the reverse.

This is why Red, Yellow, and Blue constituted our primary colors on the color wheel for paints way back in primary school and Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK) are the primary colors for color printers today but Red, Green, Blue tend to be the primary colors we discuss for projectors or monitors.