My grandfather said "I remember when we were, Black, Negro, colored &now we're African Americian what next?"

Question

In what years were we colored, black, or negro? I've always been African American. Is he for real?

Answer 1

There was also a period in the 1970s when the term "Afro-American" was in vogue

Answer 2

You left our negro, which was a quite acceptable term for decades, a long time ago, and still is reasonable. Negro is the source of the word that you represented with ***. Once the PC generation is over, pathetic words like African American and Native American will disappear for something better, I hope.

Answer 3

not sure of the exact years or anything but race segregation was horrible and there was no respect for anyone of colour.

Answer 4

You already have your answer as to when terms were used in general.  However, I did want to make a comment to other related things that came to mind with your question and the answers you got.

First of all, although colored, black, and the other word were often used.  I don't think they were originally used as negative terms really.  Culture has a way of changing the connatation of some words.  Examples of this are words like race and cult.  Race is just a large group of people whose ancestry came from a generalized geographic location and who share the same general physical traits.  A cult is just a group/organization that shares the same religious believes, symbols, etc.  Both are often seen as negative terms.  ***** in Spanish just means black.  Kneegroid (not correct spelling) is a scientific term and it gets starred out all the time too.

People are often surprised to read the dictionary definition of these terms.  They are not negative at all.  Even the swastika was not a negative symbol until Hitler decided to use it.  A pentagram wasn't a originally negative symbol  either.

The same goes for these terms.  I have been raised with "black" as the main term.  It is just in contrast with white, nothing more nothing less.  I guess I don't mind African American, but it has its problems too.  It is harder to turn into a negative term, which is good.  However, most Americans don't call themselves European American, or German American, etc. unless they came from that country.  Craig Ferguson would be a Scottish American.  He just got his citizenship.  

I have met African Americans that also raise this same question.  One gentleman from Nigeria said "I came to this country and was born in Africa.  I am African American.  But black people in this country have ancestry going back hundreds of years, how can they say they are African American.  They are Americans."  Many black people here have a little bit of European ancestry. (The cause of which sometimes sickens me.  No woman should be treated as many (but not all) were--yet another story)

I'm just a little surprised that this phenominon has not turned negative yet.  Often, when someone claims to be Native American because their great grandma was Native American; they are looked at negatively by a large part of the current Native American communities.  I'm sure it won't become the same, but it does raise the question just a bit.

Answer 5

My friend said it a little differently and it cracked me up

"my grandad was n3gro, my dad was colored, I'm black, and my kids are african american... we all in the same d**n family and we ain't even related!!!"

Answer 6

I've tried to pull quotes and organization names and have been starred out. Even quotes from Martin Luther King get starred out. I wonder if they star out United Negro College Fund- I would think that people working for that organization would get upset. Anyway, I think eventually skin color will get numbered but then the 666 people will scream.  It is sorta funny, you were once colored and maybe in the future numbered.  I hope to be a 10.  lol

Answer 7

I suppose when you get down to it , we are all African something or other assuming of course that the Out of Africa theory is correct. I myself do not hold with this theory.

Answer 8

African American is not truly what it was meant to be, because there are many people that came to America that are not one race.

Answer 9

colored was the polite phrase in the 1940s and 1950s,

maybe early 1960s

BLACK became the proper phrase in the late 1960s

African American started at least ten years ago

and i am not sure

when "people of color" was the polite phrase

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yep, trust your Grandpa.

Answer 10

While it would be nice to say it's generational, it's not.

If you are black in America and managed not to get called N* in a racist fashion, especially by someone whom isn't African American, you're definitely in the minority - so to speak.

I think the term black is more or less interchangeable with many folks, but I spend some time down south and had older folks, both up north and in the south refer - quite matter of factly to african americans as colored's.

So I think quite alot of this has to do with personal experience, but I think eventually it gets down to the fact that the American experience is quite alot different - and not necessarily all positive with respect to the experiences of other people from both the African diaspora as well as from within Africa presently.

As Americans, we like to tend to put people into boxes, as such so African-Americans, or Irish-Americans or Mexican-Americans, but that's really a rather total conceit at the end of the day, because it's really not how we see ourselves, sometimes, its helpful to see how others see us, so Germans, Nigerians, Russians or Chinese really don't see us differently we are Americans - we can choose to hyphenate but as far as every other nation is concerned, it's all just another in a long series of self-distractions on our part.

Answer 11

Nope.

Answer 12

Interesting. Even the word "n@gro" was at one time or another a euphomism. I am sure the original word was the Spanish one for Black.

I hope some time we can all say what haplotype we show in our yDNA markers and mtDNA, if not our entire nuclear genetics.

Answer 13

Mark,

As well I can remember us whites went to colored in place of a much less acceptable term. Many whites thought this to be an example of tolerance and magnanimity. They were, of course, wrong.

Sometime around 20 years ago...African American became acceptable.

Now that the human genome has been traced it is clear that every modern human is descendant from Africa. As it turns out...we are every one of us...of the same race. In fact there is only one race of humans alive on the planet today...Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

We have varied ethnic differences effecting physical appearance, eye shape hair type and skin color but in the final analysis, we all be humans, the same race.

I believe prejudice is slowly waining but it still exists just below the surface in many areas, People are slow to change and everybody loves his/her prejudices.

Enstiein said it this way:

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."

  

    Albert Einstein

Tell your Gramps...things are getting better by the moment!

Someday, we will all just be called...Americans.