The following rails helper method aims to give a select menu with options that have the background of the value (which represents a color)

  def options_with_colors(colors)
    colors.collect do |color, label| 
      "<option value='#{label}' style='background-color:#{label};'>#{color}</option> "
    end.join
  end

and called via @bg_colors = Categoryminor.where(categorymajor_id: categorymajor.id).all.pluck(:label, :name) is generating the following HTML block

<select name="choice[bg_color]" id="choice_bg_color">  
  <option value='#FFC0CB' style='background-color:#FFC0CB;'>pink</option>  
  <option value='#FFC0CB' style='background-color:#FFC0CB;'>lavender</option>  
  <option value='#FFA07A' style='background-color:#FFA07A;'>light_salmon</option> 
  [...]  
  <option value='#DCDCDC' style='background-color:#DCDCDC;'>gainsboro</option>  
  <option value='transparent' style='background-color:transparent;'>transparent</option>  
</select>

as visualised in the browser console window. I did notice that in pasting the code in the SO editing window, < and > were escaped to < and >

The actual rendering appears as

The code appears rendered correctly, why is it not view-rendered and how can this be set properly?