heard a black comedian say once, something along htel ines of :
“Ya’ll call us ‘colored’? You white folks are born pink, sunburn lobster red, get blue In the face, turn green with envy, tan to brown, then turn white again, and finally turn grey when your older... And you have the nerve to call us ‘colored’?”
I have heard before that in parts of Africa, “colored” (or coloured) refers to mixed race light skinned people. Like in the article below....exact opposite from what we have heard all our lives....
In an RGB world, perfect black is 0,0,0 or no color. Pure white is 255,255,255 or all colors up to the max. So the term “colored” in Africa, I surmise, came to mean black people who have gained some color.
www.theroot.com/articles/world/2013/10/south_africas_coloreds_identify_most_with_blacks_in_the_us.html