setting backcolor using a string

[vbcandies]

Hmmm... I have a string , say

strUncleFred = "vbRed"
or
strUncleFred = "vbGreen"

then I want

textGoat.BackColor = strUncleFred

But I get a type mismatch error. I see that .backcolor expects a long value, so I tried using
Clng(strUncleFred) ....but that got me nowhere
I really want to use only the simple Vb colors specified when the use types in a string.

I can see that vbRed is a constant and "vbRed" is something else--a string, but can you convert one to the other so easy way?