I was surprised that "colored" went out of style. I always thought it had pinache. Doesn't "colored" sound more interesting than "black" or "white"? Again, from childhood, it was quite proper to say "the colored lady who lives down the road." Now, you'd start a fight if you said that.
Then again, it may have sounded proper when one considers the frequently used alternative from my boyhood. My Mom and Dad were hell on the "n-word", but interestingly enough, my Dad's brothers were some of the vilest racists I ever met. I'm not sure where they picked that up, as my grandparents were certainly not that way... and in fact my Dad and his brothers were to a large extent raised by a black man and woman who worked with their family. They grew up with a black "Aunt" and "Uncle."
there's a difference between colored in the US and coloured in the English colonies... coloured means a person of mixed race or like in South Africa who descented from the original Dutch and Malay/African stock. My grandmother will often call me coloued or half caste but she's old and sweet you see. Or bruin messe, meaning coloured in afrikaans. My mother will sometimes talk about 'old niggers' that is people with very distasteful manners but that is an island term used across by everyone. There is a beach in Trinidad called Nigger Beach.