Why is Vanilla represented by a cream type colour when vanilla is black?

It's a very diluted coulour that will colour.

It is a bit like puting a drop of black paint into white. The drop will make the paint no longer white, but nowhere near a grey.

Chetak

While the vanilla bean itself is black, when you add the vanilla to your mixture it doesn't make any colour changes to the mixture - so it is considered colourless. If you are making a white cake and want to add vanilla - the cake is still white, it doesn't turn black.

Also, when companies advertise different products it helps to show the colours....for instance if a company has a pudding in vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, the strawberry is pink the chocolate is brown - it would not look good to have a black coloured product there as well, they need to offset the colours, so vanilla is represented by a white or cream coloured product.

Vanilla may be represented as a cream color because the amount of vanilla necessary to flavor a dish will only slightly change the color of the product from white to off white. Also, the orchid the Vanilla pod grows from can be white. Often when vanilla is used the food produced is cream colored because the only coloring came from that small amount of vanilla. This color has become recognized as vanilla just as pink has strawberry because that's what color the originally white food turns when you add it.

Cream is an appetizing and appealing color, black is not.