To get rid of the irritating feature of vim to color-ize whatever it can,
you can put this in your ~/.vimrc file.  I found this out by reading
through the various set options.  You can see this help text by typing
   :help set
when inside vi.

The " is a vi/vim comment character.

" Don't use color highlighting.
set highlight=8n,@n,en,mn,Mn,rn,tn,wn

   ------------------------------------------------------------------

The default is (all in one line and no spaces)

8:SpecialKey,        @:NonText,    d:Directory,  e:ErrorMsg,  i:IncSearch,
l:Search,m:MoreMsg,  M:ModeMsg,    n:LineNr,     r:Question,  s:StatusLine,
S:StatusLineNC,      c:VertSplit,  t:Title,      v:Visual,    w:WarningMsg,
W:WildMenu,          f:Folded,     F:FoldColumn


The ":set highlight" option can be used to set highlighting mode for
various occasions.  It is a comma separated list of character pairs.
The first character in a pair gives the occasion, the second the mode to
use for that occasion.  The occasions are:
   SpecialKey    8  Meta and special keys listed with ":map"
   NonText       @  '~' and '@' at the end of the window and
                    characters from 'showbreak'
   Directory     d  directories in CTRL-D listing and other special
                    things in listings
   ErrorMsg      e  error messages
                 h  (obsolete, ignored)
   IncSearch     i  'incsearch' highlighting
   Search        l  last search pattern highlighting (see 'hlsearch')
   MoreMsg       m  more-prompt
   ModeMsg       M  Mode (e.g., "-- INSERT --")
   LineNr        n  line number for ":number" and ":#" commands
   Question      r  hit-enter prompt and yes/no questions
   StatusLine    s  status line of current window status-line
   StatusLineNC  S  status lines of not-current windows
   Title         t  Titles for output from ":set all", ":autocmd" etc.
   VertSplit     c  column used to separate vertically split windows
   Visual        v  Visual mode
   VisualNOS     V  Visual mode when Vim does is "Not Owning the
                    Selection" Only X11 Gui's gui-x11 and xterm-clipboard.
   WarningMsg    w  warning messages
   WildMenu      W  wildcard matches displayed for 'wildmenu'
   Folded        f  line used for closed folds
   FoldColumn    F  'foldcolumn'

============================================================================

See also these 3 lines in ":help set" 
   :set t_Co=8
   :set t_Sf=<Esc>[97m
   :set t_Sb=<Esc>[101m
which is suppose to help define how to set the foreground & background colors
but I can't seem to get this to do anything.