I read an old piece today by Roger Ebert, reviewing “Night of the Living Dead” when it first came out in the 60s, and it was strange to see him use the word “negro” so often in reference to the protagonist of the film. The really odd part was that Ebert didn’t just mention that the lead actor was a negro, he continued to refer to him throughout the article as “the negro”, as if that was his defining characteristic (he referred to other characters by such characteristics as “the teenagers”, “the mother”, “the father”). Now, at the end of the piece, he does refer to him as the “hero”, but it made me wonder, why he couldn’t refer to him by that name throughout the article?
You could justify by the standards of the day using the word to mention the significant fact that the main character was a black man, but to make that his defining characteristic really seemed to me to show Ebert as a bit of a racist, at least back then. Here’s the article, check it out:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-night-of-the-living-dead-1968
Pretty typical of an era. Ebert may have been a little behind the times, but not by much. He did go on to marry an African-American woman, though.