In a time of racial and social injustice, it's ironic we are segregated by color at cisco
Red vs. Blue.
I get that racial and social injustice exist. But sometimes we can carry something too far. Opposites are too easily used for contrasts. Wet and dry, right and wrong, good and bad, day and night or light and dark. Light and dark become white and black. Yin and yang.
Just because light (white) is in the open, visible & transparent, i.e. good and dark (black) is obscured, hidden or secret, i.e. bad doesn't mean that white people are good and black people are bad. That's taking things too far. Symbolism is not meant to be literal.
And what about green meaning go/good and red meaning stop/bad? Do we have to stop using colors to differentiate everything because we'll offend colored people? Everyone's skin has color and is different. One is no better or worse than another. It's how each person acts that determine their goodness or badness.
Get off the red vs. blue. If Cisco removed the colored border around the picture, they could use portrait and landscape oriented badges like underage/over-21 driver's licenses to differentiate vendors from employees, but I'm sure someone would complain about that. Using triangles or circles/ovals isn't useful as it reduces the amount of space to put their photo in.