  The observed optical colors of quasars are generally interpreted in one of
two frameworks: unified models which attribute color to random orientation of
the accretion disk along the line-of-sight, and evolutionary models which
invoke connections between quasar systems and their environments. We test these
schema by probing the dark matter halo environments of optically-selected
quasars as a function of $g-i$ optical color by measuring the two-point
correlation functions of $\sim$ 0.34 million eBOSS quasars as well as the
gravitational deflection of cosmic microwave background photons around $\sim$
0.66 million XDQSO photometric quasar candidates. We do not detect a trend of
halo bias with optical color through either analysis, finding that
optically-selected quasars at $0.8 < z < 2.2$ occupy halos of characteristic
mass $M_{h}\sim 3\times 10^{12} \ h^{-1} M_{\odot}$ regardless of their color.
This result implies that a quasar's large-scale halo environment is not
strongly connected to its observed optical color. We also confirm findings of
fundamental differences in the radio properties of red and blue quasars by
stacking 1.4 GHz FIRST images at their positions, suggesting the observed
differences cannot be attributed to orientation. Instead, the differences
between red and blue quasars likely arise on nuclear-galactic scales, perhaps
owing to reddening by a nuclear dusty wind. Finally, we show that
optically-selected quasars' halo environments are also independent of their
$r-W2$ optical-infrared colors, while previous work has suggested that
mid-infrared-selected obscured quasars occupy more massive halos. We discuss
implications of this result for models of quasar and galaxy co-evolution.
