Ceiling fan has a black wire, white wire, green wire and also a black and white wire.
Black + White, sounds like a 3 wire cable with ground. It will carry power. Black, power Black and white, power White, neutral Green, grounding. One of the wires with power will power the lights. The other powers the motor for the fan.
The white wire from the fan gets connected to the white wire (neutral) in the ceiling box. The green wire is ground. It is connected to the fan mounting bar where the bare copper wire is connected. The remaining two wires are your hot wires. One goes to the fan and the other goes to the lights so you can run the lights on a dimmer circuit. I believe the black is for the fan and the black-white is for the lights. Your fan's instruction manual should identify these wires. IMPORTANT: Never run the fan motor on a standard dimmer. A dimmer is designed for use with resistive loads like incandescent, halogen, and (to some degree) LED lamps only. Running an inductive load like a fan motor will create noise spikes on your electrical circuit and possibly overheat the motor causing premature failure.
This Site Might Help You. RE: What is the black and white wire for? Ceiling fan has a black wire, white wire, green wire and also a black and white wire.
For the best answers, search on this site https://shorturl.im/avdD1 After reading all of these scary answers, this is from an electrician. Red and black are hot, usally to a double pole breaker. White is common, it completes the circuit. Green is the ground. If the fan has a light, red and black together, connected to the incoming black wire. The white goes to white and green is the ground. The ground is usually attached to a green screw. In this case there will be a single pole breaker. If there is no light, cap the red wire and tuck it inside the light.
The black and white wire provides power to the lights; the black wire is to power the fan motor. If you have separate wall switches for lights and fan, you can control them separately. If there's a red wire in the box, connect it to the black and white fixture wire. The black goes to the black fan wire. The green is connected to the green screw on the fixture. All of the whites should be joined together. If you do not have separate wall switches for fan and lights, just join the black, black+white and black house wire together. You will then have to control the light with a pull cord.