As a child of the segregated south I have lived through all the names used to describe persons of dusky skin color. Some were degrading and insulting slurs, however as I recall the progression of acceptable terms during my lifetime they were Negro, colored, black, and African American. I have trouble with several of these terms and offer a change suggestion.
Black is an adjective defining no color from the absorption of nearly all light. My Oxford dictionary also lists completely dark, angry, sinister, deadly, gloomy, sullen, and comic as adjectives synonyms with black. Most people of color I encounter or have known are neither completely dark, angry, sinister, gloomy or sullen. I think all the negative aspects associated with black disqualify it as a collective to describe any people of color. Young children forced to call themselves black must someday make negative associations with the word. As examples; the bad cowboy always had a black hat or black horse. The place where monsters await is always a black hole or completely dark closet. How many innocent children have been haunted and psychologically injured because they had to identify themselves as black ?
I believe Americans share a range of skin colors from nearly white (albino) to very dark. This range includes a rainbow of olive, pink, yellow, red, alabaster, tan, and brown pigmentation shades. Nobody is simply all white, black, red or yellow or should be defined as such. All people are beautiful and unique in the skin God gave them. We need to proceed and define this issue more carefully.
African American is a misleading term in my opinion because few Negroes in America recently immigrated directly from Africa. Also, people in America's "melting pot" should never carry around names with hyphenated nationalities. For decades every race, religion, creed, and skin color have co mingled and procreated to produce an unbelievable variety of skin colors and mixed race combinations, and they're all Americans. One may have an ancestry stretching back to China, Mexico, England, Ethiopia, India, Ireland, Egypt, and a thousand other places in the world, but people blessed with living in the greatest nation on the globe should celebrate America and not mix their identities with other countries or continents. Know your ancestry and celebrate your origins, but don't diminish being an American by attaching a disclaimer to your Americanism. We are a world no longer comprised of roaming tribes identifying themselves by geography, occupation, weaponry, or legends.
While Negro and Negroid scientifically describe dark-skinned people, there are millions of Americans with deep ancestral roots in Africa who are neither black (see earlier paragraph) or dark-skinned. Africans like South Americans, Europeans, Australians, and Asians sport skin colors which cover a wide spectrum of hues. Like the classification Caucasian, the term Negro is too narrow in my view. White is not always good, example, the guy in the white hat is not always the hero, and the white knight is sometimes a thug. Also, Negro contains key letters found in epithets and slang terms used against many people of dark color. The letters mispronounced can easily form a degrading pejorative term.
My choice for defining all of us is "people of color" because everybody has a unique and beautiful skin color. Rather than saying the black or white guy lets try better choices such as citizen of color, robber of color, soldier of color, or policeman of color. Best to describe someone by their name, but defining someone by a broad term such as a specific color is inadequate, in my opinion. Someone may have smooth ebony skin or a milky white complexion but to infer one is black, African-American or negro, and the other is white or has origins in the Caucasus region is limiting.
I believe our world will be a better, more peaceful place when we stop dividing and defining ourselves by skin color or other tribal identifications. I sincerely think that if a mass blood and DNA analysis were conducted on all Americans, it would show that the 350 plus million people of America are all relatives !
I will refrain from using color to ID people in the future. I hope we can all become Americans of color instead of insisting on the limiting terms we've used in the past. If the winner didn't just fly in from Algeria, he is an American man of color who just won the lottery. If the bad Canadian guy who blew up the hot dog stand just got off a bus from Canada he is properly a Canadian terrorist.
I expect a few may venture the opinion that I'm a stupid old "white" guy, but I'd prefer being labeled a stupid old American guy of color, thank you
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Black is an adjective defining no color from the absorption of nearly all light. My Oxford dictionary also lists completely dark, angry, sinister, deadly, gloomy, sullen, and comic as adjectives synonyms with black. Most people of color I encounter or have known are neither completely dark, angry, sinister, gloomy or sullen. I think all the negative aspects associated with black disqualify it as a collective to describe any people of color. Young children forced to call themselves black must someday make negative associations with the word. As examples; the bad cowboy always had a black hat or black horse. The place where monsters await is always a black hole or completely dark closet. How many innocent children have been haunted and psychologically injured because they had to identify themselves as black ?
I believe Americans share a range of skin colors from nearly white (albino) to very dark. This range includes a rainbow of olive, pink, yellow, red, alabaster, tan, and brown pigmentation shades. Nobody is simply all white, black, red or yellow or should be defined as such. All people are beautiful and unique in the skin God gave them. We need to proceed and define this issue more carefully.
African American is a misleading term in my opinion because few Negroes in America recently immigrated directly from Africa. Also, people in America's "melting pot" should never carry around names with hyphenated nationalities. For decades every race, religion, creed, and skin color have co mingled and procreated to produce an unbelievable variety of skin colors and mixed race combinations, and they're all Americans. One may have an ancestry stretching back to China, Mexico, England, Ethiopia, India, Ireland, Egypt, and a thousand other places in the world, but people blessed with living in the greatest nation on the globe should celebrate America and not mix their identities with other countries or continents. Know your ancestry and celebrate your origins, but don't diminish being an American by attaching a disclaimer to your Americanism. We are a world no longer comprised of roaming tribes identifying themselves by geography, occupation, weaponry, or legends.
While Negro and Negroid scientifically describe dark-skinned people, there are millions of Americans with deep ancestral roots in Africa who are neither black (see earlier paragraph) or dark-skinned. Africans like South Americans, Europeans, Australians, and Asians sport skin colors which cover a wide spectrum of hues. Like the classification Caucasian, the term Negro is too narrow in my view. White is not always good, example, the guy in the white hat is not always the hero, and the white knight is sometimes a thug. Also, Negro contains key letters found in epithets and slang terms used against many people of dark color. The letters mispronounced can easily form a degrading pejorative term.
My choice for defining all of us is "people of color" because everybody has a unique and beautiful skin color. Rather than saying the black or white guy lets try better choices such as citizen of color, robber of color, soldier of color, or policeman of color. Best to describe someone by their name, but defining someone by a broad term such as a specific color is inadequate, in my opinion. Someone may have smooth ebony skin or a milky white complexion but to infer one is black, African-American or negro, and the other is white or has origins in the Caucasus region is limiting.
I believe our world will be a better, more peaceful place when we stop dividing and defining ourselves by skin color or other tribal identifications. I sincerely think that if a mass blood and DNA analysis were conducted on all Americans, it would show that the 350 plus million people of America are all relatives !
I will refrain from using color to ID people in the future. I hope we can all become Americans of color instead of insisting on the limiting terms we've used in the past. If the winner didn't just fly in from Algeria, he is an American man of color who just won the lottery. If the bad Canadian guy who blew up the hot dog stand just got off a bus from Canada he is properly a Canadian terrorist.
I expect a few may venture the opinion that I'm a stupid old "white" guy, but I'd prefer being labeled a stupid old American guy of color, thank you
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