Posted on 06/30/2023 9:08:43 AM PDT by Reno89519
What is the current and acceptable terms used to describe Blacks, Black Americans, and African-Americans?
Rather than engage in endless back and forth in the various threads, I took a few minutes to research the topic and offer the following here as I suspect a lot of the issue is simply that people have not kept current with the evolving terms that are acceptable and those that have become unacceptable in common discourse. Does it matter? In my opinion, yes, whether intentionally or not, using obsolete and offensive terms may cause damage to FR and others here by association. They at best distract from whatever writers are saying or are used to intentionally enflame discussion. Recall in 2008 FR was labeled racist for some of the terms used regarding Barack Obama.
Anyway, based on my brief research this morning, please let me update on why I think everyone should stop using "Negroes", "Negroid", "Negress", etc.
Throughout time many commonly used descriptive words have become dated, derogatory, and even offensive. It also depends on their usage. Currently Black and African-American are commonly used to describe people tracing their ancestry to Africa. People of Color or variations of that is also used. Negro and Negroid are now dated and offensive. In part because they were used in derogatory and demeaning ways to refer to or identify people.
As an aside, "Negroid" was an anthropological term, along with Caucasoid and Mongoloid to divide humans into three categories. Outside of academia, "Negroid" and "Mongoloid" were typically used with racist derogatory intent. Anyway, these terms are now dated and unused.
Back to "Negro". This term is also no longer acceptable and used in normal conversation. Consider in 2008 the late Senator Harry Reid was called out and even asked to resign for observing Barack Obama was a light-skinned African-American with "no Negro dialect". He apologized for "poor choice of words". The term "Negro" started becoming unacceptable in the 1960s and "was totally uncouth by the mid-1980s". AP and NYT dropped it in the 1970s and the Supreme Court reportedly last used the term outside quotation marks or citations to other scholarship was in 1985.(1) The US Census last used the term on the 2010 Census. In 2016 Congress approved "modernizing" terminology from "Negro" to "African American".
In 2021, as a more recent example, the Texas legislature unnanimously called for removal of the term "Negro" from location names across the state.
As the National Archives writes, the current preferred terms for a Black person are "Black person/people, Black, Black Americans, African American(s)" and non-perferred terms are "nigger (pl. niggers), negro (pl. negroes), Negro (pl. Negroes)".
Our choice of words reflect on us and on everyone here. Speaking for myself, I'd like to think that FR is not a racist site, that its members and writers are not racist, nor that we use racist terms to enflame discussion or for other ill intent.
Anyway, my two cents on the matter, do with it as you wish.
Some reading on the topic and references for above:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negroid
https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/question/2010/october.htm (1)
https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/lcdrg/appendix/black-person
https://www.npr.org/2017/12/13/568317026/negro-not-allowed-on-federal-forms-white-house-to-decide
Amish. Of course.
You win!!! I’ll add Yutes.
I think it depends on what type of crime context we’re talking about.
Gimmedats
Dindunuffins
Knuckleheads
Yutes
Mostly Peacefuls
Aspiring Rappers
I’ll write Blacks, Whites as proper nouns. Some argue for blacks, whites which doesn’t make sense since no individual is black or white. I think the argument is concerned with some form of elevated stature via the the capitalization.
Who nominated you for the speech police?
The biggest problem is the idea of the need for a classification. They are Americans. Classes, catagories, and identifications are Marxist tools to foster division and chaos.
Yes, all of these are sometimes used sarcastically but never with any apparent degrogatory intent. Maybe ‘if Obama had a son’ goes with this as well?
I refer to Elon Musk as an African-American. Because he is.
I mostly try to refer to all the others as negroes. Whatever term I chose will be “offensive”. So I just go with that one.
And who gave you the authority to determine what speechbis acceptable?
You don’t have my permission to change my language.
Got it?
For Asians I use East Asian or South Asian. Funny that people in “Amurca” never refer to South Asians as “brown people,” but do say that about Hispanics (even though I personally know Hispanics who are paler than I).
Years ago in a business meeting we were discussing race not in political ways like identity politics, but more from a marketing perspective. I said something like: "So far what we've seen from the black users of our software..." I was interrupted and told the correct term was "African-Americans". I asked if she was sure she wanted our discourse to demand so many syllables and she said yes and the others nodded timidly. So I played along. Later in that same meeting when that same black lady said "whites" I said the correct term is "European Americans". She said that was dumb. I calmly thanked her for helping me make my earlier point. I then told the group that I and anybody else can be polite and adopt any rules for etiquette as long as the rules applied to all races the same. Thus, at the meeting they decided blacks will be blacks and whites will be whites and that was the last anybody ever said of it (at least for the remaining year or so I was on that project).
No one, and I am just a long-time paying supporter on FR, nothing more. Again, just my two cents. As I wrote, I objected to what I saw as derogatory and offensive. Maybe you disagree? Here’s a great opportunity for you to share your thoughts on the matter.
Yeah it does
Someone already mentioned Amish
Teenagers and young people are code for it too
In the 1940s, it was “colored”(NAACP).
Back in the 1950s, Negro was the term for dark-skinned Americans
Then in the 1960s/1970s, it was “Black”. (Black Panthers).
At some point during the 80s or 90s, it became “African-American”. (If that’s the case, I’m a European-American).
Now, I think “Black” is back.
All the Black people I know refer to themselves as ‘Black’. They use ‘African American’ more formally and in certain contexts, but not often. They identify as ‘Black’.
I personally find African-American offensive.
That is not a race destination.
What about white South Africans who have become US citizens?
Are we required to start using ludicrous terms such as African-French, African-Russian, African-Chinese, African-African???
Are these different races or some kind of subspecies?
> Some people have recently used the terms “Negroes”, “Negroid”, “Negress”, etc. I shared that these are dated and offensive… <
You are, of course, correct. Folks who use those terms are just trying to be cute. Sort of like children in the schoolyard who use slight variations of vulgar words to insult someone. “Puck you,” for example.
Side point #1. Yes, sticks and stones…etc. I suppose that could be a thread all on its own.
Side point #2. We are all guests here at Free Republic. We really ought not post anything that brings disrepute to the site. And I’m sure lib’s from Democratic Underground, etc. occasionally lurk here, just to catch FR being “racist”, or whatever.
I prefer the term ‘Black.’
However, if the terms ‘whitey’, ‘cracker’, or ‘white supremacist’ are thrown my way, I will change my response.
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