Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
The word negro on that crayon is not for English speakers anymore than the word gris on the grey crayon is meant for English speakers but I'm sure you're aware of that.
Negro horse? Negro shoelaces? Negro car? Negro hair? Heh heh heh Negro hat? Negro night? Negro deed? In the negro (vs in the red)? Negro tar?
Negro (plural Negroes) is an archaic term traditionally used to denote persons considered to be of Negroid heritage. The term can be construed as offensive, inoffensive or completely neutral, largely depending on the region where it is used. It has various equivalents in other European languages.
Around 1442, the Portuguese first arrived in Southern Africa while trying to find a sea route to India.[1][2] The term negro, literally meaning "black", was used by the Spanish and Portuguese as a simple description to refer to the Bantu peoples that they encountered. Negro denotes "black" in Spanish and Portuguese, derived from the Latin word niger, meaning black, which itself is probably from a Proto-Indo-European root *nekw-, "to be dark", akin to *nokw-, "night".[3][4]
From the 18th century to the late 1960s, negro (later capitalized) was considered to be the proper English-language term for people of black African origin. According to Oxford Dictionaries, use of the word "now seems out of date or even offensive in both British and US English".
Negro superseded colored as the most polite word for African Americans at a time when black was considered more offensive.
In Colonial America during the 1600s the term Negro was, according to one historian, also used to describe Native Americans.[8] John Belton O'Neall's The Negro Law of South Carolina (1848) stipulated that "the term negro is confined to slave Africans, (the ancient Berbers) and their descendants. It does not embrace the free inhabitants of Africa, such as the Egyptians, Moors, or the negro Asiatics, such as the Lascars.
The American Negro Academy was founded in 1897, to support liberal arts education. Marcus Garvey used the word in the names of black nationalist and pan-Africanist organizations such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association (founded 1914), the Negro World (1918), the Negro Factories Corporation (1919), and the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World (1920). W. E. B. Du Bois and Dr. Carter G. Woodson used it in the titles of their non-fiction books, The Negro (1915) and The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933) respectively. "Negro" was accepted as normal, both as exonym and endonym, until the late 1960s, after the later Civil Rights Movement. One well-known example is the identification by Martin Luther King, Jr. of his own race as "Negro" in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech of 1963.
However, during the 1950s and 1960s, some black American leaders, notably Malcolm X, objected to the word Negro because they associated it with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second class citizens, or worse.[10] Malcolm X preferred Black to Negro, but also started using the term Afro-American after leaving the Nation of Islam.[11]
Since the late 1960s, various other terms have been more widespread in popular usage. These include black, Black African, Afro-American (in use from the late 1960s to 1990) and African American.[12] The word Negro fell out of favor by the early 1970s. However, many older African Americans initially found the term black more offensive than Negro.
posted
I'm just trying to figure out where you got the idea that negro meant a color other than black. Generally when you open up an English dictionary, negro is synonymous with the word black. Using loanwords doesn't mean they're using it to mean another color.
More to the point, you were saying that in AA using the word "black" they were stealing the word from people who used it in their own traditional racial terminologies where it was applied as a physical descriptor. But that'd only be theft if AA were saying that this is the only word "race" can mean. That's not really it. They just don't like it when contextually irrelevant uses of the word are injected into a conversation about a systemic vehicle of oppression and inequality.
I'm trying to understand how you can't have two different uses for the same word. If someone says "slay" that doesn't mean they're promoting you to slash someone with an object. If someone says "get lit" they're not always intending to say you should be set on fire. Ignoring African concepts of race that are not about international institutional discrimination isn't stealing the right to use it as a descriptor, it's acknowledging they're having a very different conversation than the type AA are talking about. Its only when AA walk into African spaces and force Africans to speak of the colonial born concept (when they weren't) that this would become a problem. But just ignoring conversations that have nothing to do with yours and keeping to one's own conversation?
quote:Originally posted by Oshun: [ I'm just trying to figure out where you got the idea that negro meant a color other than black. Generally when you open up an English dictionary, negro is synonymous with the word black. Using loanwords doesn't mean they're using it to mean another color.
"negro" has an historical connotation corresponding with the first slave trading in the Trans Atlantic slave trade by the Portuguese and Spanish, therefore some feel that the connotation of slave is an added meaning when the word is but is used in America but peculiarly not translated to English
In other words the connotative meaning of negro is
"a slave or former slave with dark skin"
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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posted
Today, Hispanics generally call African Americans, moreno/a that means color of the Moors.
When they use negro/a that means the person is very dark.
The Portuguese term for Black person is preto/a.
The French use Negre. Noire. and surprisingly the French of African/Caribbean descent use the English word "Black" sometimes.
There is the National Council of Negro Women.
The United Negro College Fund.
The Negro Leagues of Baseball.
Negro is also short for a Negroid skull.
I have no problem with the terms African American, Black, Colored, Negro since these are historical terms.
I fill out ethnicity forms by saying my ancestors came to the USA on slaveships. I purposely make that clear because here in New York City there is a large population derived from recent immigrants from Africa, Caribbean or their children and I've been explaining this to the non-Black people who I encounter here in New York City. I've many discussions on this subject because many do not know. Not joking.
Posts: 1115 | From: GOD Bless the USA | Registered: May 2006
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Αἰθίοψ , οπος, ὁ, fem. Αἰθιοπίς , ίδος, ἡ （Αἰθίοψ as fem., A.Fr.328, 329): pl.
A. “Αἰθιοπῆες” Il.1.423, whence nom. “Αἰθιοπεύς” Call.Del.208: (αἴθω, ὄψ):—properly, Burnt-face, i.e. Ethiopian, negro, Hom., etc.; prov., Αἰθίοπα σμήχειν 'to wash a blackamoor white', Luc.Ind. 28.
2. a fish, Agatharch.109.
II. Adj., Ethiopian, “Αἰθιοπὶς γλῶσσα” Hdt.3.19; “γῆ” A.Fr.300, E.Fr.228.4: Subst. Αἰθιοπίς, ἡ, title of Epic poem in the Homeric cycle; also name of a plant, silver sage, Salvia argentea, Dsc.4.104:— also Αἰθιόπιος , α, ον, E.Fr.349: Αἰθιοπικός , ή, όν, Hdt., etc.; Αἰ. κύμινον, = ἄμι, Hp.Morb.3.17, Dsc. 3.62:—Subst. Αἰθιοπία , ἡ, Hdt., etc. 2. red-brown, AP7.196 (Mel.), cf. Ach. Tat.4.5.
Ps, notice how the words, Ethiopian, Moor and Negro are being used synonymous and indiscriminately?). Posts: 22234 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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