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Negro

Negro is a term derived from the Spanish and Portuguese word negro, meaning "black," which entered English in the 1550s to denote individuals of dark-skinned African ancestry, particularly those from sub-Saharan regions.^[1]^[2] The word traces its roots to the Latin niger, signifying black or dark, and was initially applied descriptively to physical characteristics rather than as a marker of inherent inferiority, though its connotations evolved with colonial and slavery-era associations in the Americas.^[1]^[3] Historically, "Negro" became the standard English-language designation for people of African descent in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, supplanting earlier terms like "colored" and appearing in the 1900 U.S. Census alongside "Black" to categorize populations based on African origins.^[4]^[5] It was embraced by black American leaders and organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (which used variants) and the United Negro College Fund founded in 1944, reflecting self-identification within communities amid Jim Crow segregation and civil rights struggles.^[6]^[3] Usage peaked mid-20th century, with figures like Martin Luther King Jr. employing it in speeches, but declined sharply after 1966 due to the Black Power movement's preference for "Black" as a symbol of empowerment and rejection of assimilated labels.^[6]^[7] In official contexts, the term persisted longer; the U.S. Census included "Negro or Black" options through 1980 and "Black, African Am., or Negro" in 2000 to accommodate older respondents familiar with it, but the Census Bureau phased it out by 2013 following surveys indicating preference for "Black" or "African American" among most self-identifying individuals.^[8]^[9] Today, "Negro" is widely viewed as archaic and potentially offensive outside historical or proper noun uses (e.g., Negro Leagues Baseball), with its decline attributed to generational shifts and cultural sensitivities rather than any intrinsic slur status, as evidenced by its prior neutral or positive adoption within affected communities.^[3]^[6] Controversies persist over its application in modern discourse, where empirical distinctions in ancestry and phenotype—supported by genetic clustering—clash with social preferences for fluid identity terms, highlighting tensions between descriptive accuracy and evolving linguistic norms.^[7]^[5]

Etymology and Linguistic Origins

Derivation from Latin and Romance Languages

The term negro originates from the Latin adjective niger, pronounced approximately as /ˈnɪɡɛr/, which denoted the color black or dark shades, often applied to objects, substances like ink, or figuratively to misfortune.^[10] ^[11] In classical Latin texts, such as those by Pliny the Elder in Naturalis Historia (circa 77 CE), niger described black soils, animals, or night, without ethnic connotations.^[12] In the Romance languages, niger underwent phonetic changes characteristic of Vulgar Latin evolution, particularly in Iberian branches. Spanish and Portuguese developed negro (pronounced /ˈneɡɾo/), preserving the core semantics of blackness while adapting to lenition and vowel shifts; for instance, the intervocalic /g/ remained voiced, and the word extended to describe human complexion by the medieval period.^[10] This form appears in 13th-century Spanish texts like the Cantar de Mio Cid (circa 1200 CE) for the color, and by the 15th century in Portuguese chronicles of African coastal trade, applying it to sub-Saharan peoples.^[13] French, diverging earlier, natively evolved niger to noir for black, but borrowed nègre in the 16th century directly from Spanish/Portuguese negro to specifically denote Black Africans, as seen in Jacques Cartier's 1534 voyage accounts.^[14] Italian retained a similar path with nero, used for the color since the 13th century in Dante's Divina Commedia (circa 1320), though less prominently in early ethnic descriptors compared to Iberian usage.^[10] These derivations reflect standard Romance phonological patterns—palatalization avoidance in Iberia and semantic specialization—without semantic pejoration in Latin or early Romance contexts, where niger carried neutral descriptive weight akin to modern color terms.^[11] The transition to ethnonymic use in Romance languages coincided with 15th-century Iberian maritime expansion, when Portuguese explorers like Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460) documented "negros" in West African encounters, systematizing the term for trade and enslavement records.^[13]

Proto-Indo-European Roots and Early Meanings

The Latin adjective niger ("black"), ancestral to Romance terms like Spanish and Portuguese negro, has an etymology that remains uncertain but is hypothesized by some linguists to derive from a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *nekʷ- or *negʷ-, potentially connoting "death," "night," or "darkness" through semantic extension from absence or bareness.^[15] This root may relate to PIE *nókʷts ("night"), where darkness implies a "naked" or unadorned void of light, as proposed in comparative reconstructions linking Indo-European terms for nocturnal obscurity. However, direct attestation is lacking, and alternative derivations, such as from non-IE substrates or independent Italic innovations, have been considered without consensus in etymological scholarship.^[15] In classical Latin texts from the Republican and Imperial periods (circa 3rd century BCE to 2nd century CE), niger functioned primarily as a descriptive adjective for black or dark coloration, applied to physical attributes like hair (capillus niger, black hair) or skin tones ranging from swarthy Mediterranean complexions to dyed fabrics and ink.^[16] It lacked ethnic specificity in early usage, instead denoting any deep, non-reflective shade, as in Virgil's Aeneid (1st century BCE) where it describes shadowy forests or ominous clouds.^[16] Figuratively, niger carried negative connotations of gloom, misfortune, or moral darkness, associating black with death, mourning, or evil omens—evident in phrases like litus nigrum (black shore, implying peril) or in Pliny the Elder's Natural History (77 CE), where it evokes foreboding natural phenomena.^[16] This dual literal and symbolic sense persisted, influencing later Romance derivations without initial ties to human racial categorization.^[17]

Historical Usage in European Exploration and Trade

Application During the Age of Discovery (15th-17th Centuries)

Portuguese explorers initiated the application of "negro" to sub-Saharan Africans during mid-15th-century coastal expeditions sponsored by Prince Henry the Navigator. Beginning with voyages beyond Cape Bojador in 1434, and reaching the Senegal River by 1445, these efforts involved raids that captured dark-skinned individuals for enslavement and trade. Contemporary Portuguese records distinguished these "negros"—named for their black skin—from North African Moors, associating the term with emerging patterns of servitude. By 1444, Nuno Tristão's expedition returned with 29 such captives to Lagos, Portugal, where they were sold, marking early documented use in exploratory contexts.^[18] Gomes Eanes de Zurara's Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (completed 1453) offers the period's primary narrative source, detailing how "negros" were systematically acquired and distributed. Commissioned by King Afonso V, the chronicle describes the 1441 coastal raid by Antão Gonçalves yielding ten "negros" and one Berber, alongside later hauls like the 235 sold at Lagos in 1444 and 927 divided in 1450. Zurara frames these captures as divinely sanctioned for Christian conversion and labor, embedding "negro" within justifications for exploitation that prioritized empirical observations of skin color and cultural differences over prior Mediterranean slave precedents.^[19]^[20] By the late 15th century, the term's usage extended to permanent trading posts, such as Elmina Castle founded in 1482, where "negros" were exchanged for gold under Portuguese monopoly. This application persisted into the 16th century as Spain incorporated "negro" into Atlantic ventures; the first 17 "negros" arrived in Hispaniola in 1501 via Spanish ships from Spain, predating broader transatlantic flows. Iberian legal frameworks increasingly equated "negro" with slave status, reflecting causal links between exploratory encounters, phenotypic descriptors, and institutionalized bondage.^[21] In the 17th century, Dutch, English, and French entrants to African trade adopted "negro" analogously, as seen in charters like the Dutch West India Company's 1621 operations along Guinea coasts. Yet Iberian precedents dominated, with the term serving administrative functions in forts and ledgers tracking thousands of "negros" annually—estimated at over 1,000 exported from Upper Guinea by 1500. This era's documentation reveals "negro" as a pragmatic label for trade categorization, grounded in direct coastal interactions rather than abstract ideology, though later synonymous with enslavability across Europe.^[22]

Role in Documentation of African Encounters

Portuguese chroniclers initiated the systematic use of "negros" in documentation of African coastal encounters during the 1440s and 1450s under Prince Henry the Navigator's sponsorship. In Gomes Eanes de Zurara's Crónica da Conquista de Guiné (c. 1453), the term denotes the dark-skinned sub-Saharan Africans raided along the Senegal and Guinea coasts, serving as a descriptor for captives in expedition reports. Zurara details the 1444 raid led by Lançarote de Freitas, which delivered 235 "negros" to Lagos for auction, establishing the word's role in recording the quantities and origins of enslaved individuals transported to Portugal.^[18]^[23] Alvise da Cadamosto, a Venetian navigator in Portuguese service, further employed "negro" in his 1455–1456 voyage accounts to classify the inhabitants of the Gambia and Senegal rivers, integrating observations of their physical traits, societies, and trade practices into navigational logs for subsequent explorers.^[24] This usage extended "negro" beyond mere color notation to encompass ethnographic distinctions, separating these groups from North African "Moors" and facilitating targeted interactions in gold and slave trades.^[25] By the 16th century, the term permeated maps and treaties as European powers expanded involvement; Portuguese charts labeled swathes of West Africa as "Terra dos Negros," a convention adopted in English and Dutch cartography as "Negroland" to demarcate territories dominated by dark-skinned populations and European trading posts.^[26] English Guinea voyages, such as those documented in the 1555 expedition of Thomas Windham, recorded negotiations with "Negro" kings and merchants, using the label in manifests to quantify slaves and commodities exchanged.^[25] In these records, "negro" functioned as a practical classificatory tool grounded in observable pigmentation, enabling precise logging of encounters, alliances, and extractions without initial pejorative intent, though it later intertwined with enslavement narratives. Primary accounts prioritized empirical details like numbers captured—e.g., over 1,000 "negros" by 1450 in Portuguese tallies—to justify ventures as civilizing missions against perceived paganism.^[27]^[28]

Usage in the Context of Slavery and Colonialism

Transatlantic Slave Trade Terminology (16th-19th Centuries)

In Iberian languages, the term negro became the standard descriptor for enslaved sub-Saharan Africans during the early phases of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, with usage dating to the mid-15th century when Portuguese explorers began systematic captures along the West African coast. By this period, negro had evolved to be essentially synonymous with escravo (slave) in Portuguese and Spanish contexts, reflecting the racialization of enslavement practices that targeted dark-skinned populations from regions like Guinea and Angola.^[21] Primary Portuguese documents referred to shipments as negros cativos de Angola (captive blacks from Angola), emphasizing origin and captive status in trade ledgers and royal licenses.^[29] Spanish colonial contracts, such as those under the asiento system from the 16th century onward, specified quotas of piezas de Indias or simply negros to be delivered to American ports, treating individuals as interchangeable commodities differentiated by age, sex, and health rather than names or tribal affiliations.^[29] As the trade expanded to include northern European powers in the 17th and 18th centuries, English, Dutch, and French merchants adopted negro or equivalents like neger and nègre in manifests and bills of lading, often listing captives collectively as "prime negroes" or "seasoned negroes" to denote quality and acclimation for labor in plantations.^[30] English slave ship records from the 18th century, such as those from Liverpool and Bristol voyages, routinely cataloged human cargo under headings like "Negro Boys" or "New Negroes," with notations on mortality rates and sales values tied to physical attributes like height and dental condition.^[31] This terminology underscored the dehumanizing commodification inherent to the trade, where negro served not merely as a racial marker but as a legal and economic category implying perpetual servitude, distinct from indentured Europeans or indigenous laborers.^[30]^[32] The persistence of negro in trade documentation through the 19th century, even as abolitionist pressures mounted, is evident in British parliamentary inquiries and American port records, which continued to employ the term in enumerating "negro slaves" imported or exported until legal bans like the U.S. Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1808 and Britain's Slave Trade Act of 1807.^[33] French and Dutch records similarly used variants in the papiers d'équipage (crew papers) for voyages to the Caribbean, often cross-referencing with African embarkation points labeled as "Negroland" or "Guinea Coast."^[34] While some documents distinguished bozales (newly arrived Africans) from ladinos (creolized or acculturated blacks), the overarching category of negro remained dominant, reflecting a pragmatic focus on skin color as a proxy for enslavability in the racial hierarchies of colonial empires.^[35] This usage, rooted in empirical observations of physical traits rather than modern identity constructs, facilitated the trade's scale, which historians estimate involved over 12 million Africans between 1500 and 1866, though exact figures vary by source due to incomplete manifests.^[21]

Colonial Administrative and Legal Classifications

In Iberian colonial administrations, particularly in Spanish and Portuguese territories in the Americas, the term "negro" served as a primary racial-legal category from the mid-15th century onward, often equating to enslaved status for individuals of sub-Saharan African origin. In Spain and Portugal, "negro" denoted an enslaveable racial group distinct from "white" Moors, with royal slaves referred to as "His Majesty’s Negros" by the 16th century. This usage extended to the Americas via the sistema de castas, a hierarchical classification system formalized in the 16th century in viceroyalties like New Spain and Peru, where "negros" signified persons of unmixed African descent—typically slaves or their freeborn issue—subject to perpetual bondage, restricted occupations, and prohibitions on bearing arms or testifying in court against Spaniards. Mixtures were subcategorized, such as mulato from Spaniard and negro parentage, influencing inheritance, taxation, and guild access; for instance, 18th-century casta paintings and ordinances codified these distinctions to maintain social order.^[21]^[36]^[37] In Portuguese Brazil, administrative inventories from the 1570s–1580s differentiated "negros de Guiné" (Africans imported for labor) from "negros da terra" (enslaved Indigenous peoples), reflecting a pragmatic extension of the term to enforce servitude based on utility rather than strict ancestry, though a 1755 royal decree curtailed applying "negro" to Indians to avoid conflation. Legal controls, such as those in 16th–17th-century Mexico, regulated "negro" slaves' movements, marriages, and resistance, with over 120,000 documented attempts at manumission via coartación (self-purchase) by the mid-17th century, underscoring the term's role in commodifying human status.^[21]^[30]^[38] British colonies adopted "negro" in slave codes to delineate chattel property and racial hierarchies, as in the 1661 Barbados code—titled An Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes—which treated "Negroes" as inheritable goods without rights to trial or family integrity, influencing subsequent mainland laws by defining slaves as "heathenish" and brutish. The 1705 Virginia act consolidated this by mandating servitude for children of "negro" or mulatto mothers, imposing fines (e.g., 15 pounds sterling) on white women bearing "bastard" children by negroes, and banning interracial marriage under penalty of banishment, thereby legally entrenching maternal descent for bondage. Colonial records, including 1710–1718 Virginia import lists classifying 69 Indians as "negroes" and 1719 South Carolina slave tallies grouping non-pure Indians as such, reveal "negro" as an elastic administrative label prioritizing enslavement over precise ethnology.^[39]^[40]^[41]^[30]

Adoption and Prevalence in English-Speaking Contexts

Early American English (18th-19th Centuries)

In early American English, the term "Negro" solidified as the conventional descriptor for individuals of sub-Saharan African descent, supplanting less precise alternatives like "blackamoor" or "African" in legal, administrative, and everyday usage amid the expansion of chattel slavery. Derived from Iberian Romance languages via transatlantic commerce, it appeared routinely in 18th-century colonial records to denote enslaved persons and free blacks alike, often in statutes delineating racial hierarchies and property rights; for instance, Virginia laws from the 1700s explicitly categorized "Negro" individuals as subject to perpetual servitude, distinguishing them from indentured white laborers.^[42] This linguistic adoption reflected causal realities of demographic shifts, with enslaved Africans comprising up to 40% of some southern colonies' populations by mid-century, necessitating standardized terminology for ownership, taxation, and militia exemptions.^[42] Prominent figures like Thomas Jefferson employed "Negro" descriptively in intellectual discourse, as seen in his Notes on the State of Virginia (written 1781–1782, published 1785), where he examined purported physiological traits: "Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself."^[43] Such usage extended to founding-era documents and correspondence, where the term denoted racial categories without the pejorative freight it later acquired, underscoring its role in rationalizing slavery through empirical observation of skin color, cranial features, and perceived cognitive disparities.^[44] Federal mechanisms, including the 1790 census, implicitly referenced "Negro" populations via counts of "all other free persons" (predominantly free blacks) and slaves, with aggregate data later compiled under "Negro" headings in official analyses tracking growth from 757,208 enslaved in 1790 to over 3.9 million by 1860.^[45] During the 19th century, "Negro" permeated literature, journalism, and abolitionist tracts amid intensifying sectional debates, appearing in over 100 slave narratives and periodicals to catalog experiences of bondage and manumission; for example, it framed discussions of population dynamics, with the term's frequency rising in print sources as slavery's economic scale—valued at $3.5 billion in human property by 1860—demanded precise racial enumeration.^[30] Legal precedents, such as state codes and Supreme Court rulings, reinforced this by classifying "Negro" ancestry for inheritance and citizenship restrictions, as in North Carolina's 1850s definitions incorporating "Negro" blood quantum to enforce segregation.^[46] Empirical records from plantations and urban registries further attest to its neutrality in contemporaneous accounts, where it served as a factual marker of lineage amid intermixtures with Native Americans and whites, often yielding terms like "mulatto" or "quadroon" for gradations.^[30] This prevalence persisted until mid-century shifts, but "Negro" remained the dominant lexicon for black Americans in both elite and vernacular spheres.

20th-Century Standardization and Self-Adoption by Black Americans

In the early 20th century, "Negro" emerged as the preferred and standardized term for self-identification among many Black American intellectuals and leaders, supplanting earlier variants like "colored" as a marker of dignity and racial pride. W.E.B. Du Bois spearheaded a campaign in the 1920s to capitalize the "N" in "Negro," arguing in correspondence with editors and publishers that the lowercase form constituted a personal insult to eight million Americans, and successfully pressuring outlets like The New York Times to adopt the convention by the decade's end.^[47]^[6] This push reflected a broader effort to assert linguistic agency amid persistent racial hierarchies. Official standardization reinforced this trend, particularly through U.S. government classifications. The 1900 Census introduced "Negro" alongside "Black" for persons of African origin, and by 1930, the Bureau settled on "Negro" as the primary descriptor, maintaining it as the dominant category for Black Americans through much of the century.^[4]^[48] Black-led institutions further embedded the term in cultural and educational frameworks; for instance, historian Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 and launched Negro History Week in February 1926 to promote scholarly recognition of Black contributions, selecting the timing to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.^[49]^[50] Self-adoption extended to organizational nomenclature and media, signaling communal endorsement. The United Negro College Fund, established on April 25, 1944, by Frederick D. Patterson and allies including Mary McLeod Bethune, pooled resources for 27 historically Black colleges, embodying collective investment in education under the term's banner.^[51] Publications like Woodson's Journal of Negro History (1916 onward) and ventures such as All-Negro Comics (1947) demonstrated proactive cultural production, with Black creators using "Negro" to frame narratives of achievement and identity.^[5] This era's prevalence of "Negro" in Black-led advocacy, from the NAACP's founding documents to northern urban communities, underscored its role as a term of empowerment until mid-century shifts.^[52]

Specific Regional and Cultural Usages

United States: Institutional and Organizational Employment

In the United States, the term "Negro" was extensively employed in governmental institutions throughout the 20th century, particularly in official racial classifications and data collection. The U.S. Census Bureau first incorporated "Negro" in 1900 as part of the category "Black (Negro or Negro descent)," replacing earlier subdivisions like mulatto, quadroon, and octoroon to simplify enumeration of individuals of African origin.^[4] This usage persisted, with the 1970 Census offering "Negro or Black" and the 1980 Census using "Black or Negro," reflecting its status as a standard descriptor until the term's gradual phase-out; "Negro" was fully removed from Census response options by 2020.^[53] Similarly, federal agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), established in 1964 under the Civil Rights Act, identified "Negro" as one of four minority groups in employment data, underscoring its role in anti-discrimination enforcement and statistical tracking.^[54] The term appeared in various federal laws and forms until 2016, when legislation signed by President Obama excised "Negro" (alongside "Oriental") from statutory language, though it remained permissible on some forms as an optional descriptor for the "Black" category prior to that.^[55] Educational institutions and funding bodies adopted "Negro" to denote organizations serving African American students and communities. The United Negro College Fund (UNCF), founded on April 25, 1944, by Frederick D. Patterson (president of Tuskegee Institute) and Mary McLeod Bethune, centralized fundraising for 27 underfunded historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), raising over $5 billion by the 21st century to support minority higher education.^[51] Initially focused on smaller HBCUs educating predominantly Black students, UNCF's campaigns, including the iconic 1970s slogan "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," reinforced the term's institutional legitimacy in philanthropy and academia.^[56] Many HBCUs themselves, such as those affiliated with UNCF, were historically referred to as Negro colleges in official charters and correspondence, reflecting segregated education's framework under Jim Crow laws. Professional and civic organizations formalized "Negro" in their titles to advance economic, social, and cultural interests amid segregation. The Negro Leagues, comprising professional baseball teams for African American players excluded from Major League Baseball, were institutionalized with the founding of the Negro National League in 1920 and its revival in 1933, alongside the Negro American League; these entities operated as structured businesses, hosting Negro World Series and sustaining Black-owned enterprises until integration in the late 1940s and 1950s.^[57] In labor and advocacy, groups like the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), established by Marcus Garvey in 1914, grew into the largest African American-led movement of its era, promoting economic self-reliance through ventures like the Negro Factories Corporation.^[58] The National Council of Negro Women, formed in 1935, united women's organizations for community uplift, while the Negro Organization Society in Virginia, active during the Jim Crow period, emphasized self-improvement and advocacy at the grassroots level.^[59] These bodies, often self-initiated by Black leaders, utilized the term as a precise identifier for targeted institutional efforts until linguistic shifts in the late 20th century prompted rebranding, though some, like UNCF, retained it into the modern era.^[60]

Liberia: Influence of American Settlers and National Identity

The Republic of Liberia was established in 1822 under the auspices of the American Colonization Society (ACS), an organization formed in 1816 by white American philanthropists and politicians to resettle free African Americans and emancipated slaves on the West African coast, with the initial settlement at Cape Mesurado developing into Monrovia.^[61] These settlers, numbering around 13,000 by the late 19th century and known as Americo-Liberians, originated primarily from the United States and carried with them a racial self-identification rooted in American English terminology of the era, where "Negro" served as the standard, neutral descriptor for people of African descent.^[62] Upon declaring independence on July 26, 1847, Liberia's constitution enshrined a national identity explicitly tied to Negro ancestry, stipulating in Article V, Section 13 that "only Negroes or persons of Negro descent shall qualify by birth or by naturalization to be citizens of Liberia," thereby excluding whites and non-blacks from citizenship to preserve a sovereign black republic insulated from European colonial domination.^[63] This provision reflected the settlers' imported worldview, which positioned Liberia as a refuge and experimental homeland for the "Negro race," as articulated by ACS proponents who viewed the colony as advancing self-governance for those deemed incapable of full integration in the U.S.^[64] Americo-Liberians, comprising about 5% of the population by independence, dominated political and economic structures, fostering a national identity that emphasized their American heritage, Protestant Christianity, and a paternalistic civilizing mission toward indigenous ethnic groups like the Kru and Vai, whom they often designated as "country people" in contrast to their own "civilized" Negro settler status.^[65] The term "Negro" thus permeated Liberian foundational rhetoric and identity formation, appearing in official discourse as a unifying racial category that bridged the settlers' transatlantic origins with aspirations for pan-African uplift, though it also reinforced hierarchical distinctions between Americo-Liberian elites and indigenous populations, who were gradually incorporated as citizens only after 1904 amendments extended eligibility to "persons of African descent" born in Liberia.^[65] This settler-driven identity persisted through the True Whig Party's rule from 1878 to 1980, led by Americo-Liberians who maintained English as the lingua franca and U.S.-style institutions, embedding "Negro" solidarity in foreign policy, such as affiliations with the American Negro Academy and support for global black causes, until the 1980 coup disrupted this framework.^[62] The constitutional emphasis on Negro descent underscored a causal realism in the settlers' project: a deliberate racial exclusion to counter perceived threats of white influence, prioritizing empirical self-determination over inclusive universalism, even as it sowed internal ethnic tensions that contributed to later civil conflicts.^[63]

Usage in Non-English Languages

Romance Languages: Spanish and Portuguese Contexts

In Spanish and Portuguese, the term negro derives from Latin niger, meaning "black" or "dark," and entered these Romance languages as a descriptor for color before being applied to people of sub-Saharan African origin encountered during exploration and colonization starting in the 15th century.^[1]^[2] Portuguese explorers, initiating contact with West African coastal societies around 1441, used negro to denote dark-skinned individuals, often in the context of trade and enslavement, with records from the 1440s onward documenting its application to captives transported to Portugal and later to colonies like Brazil.^[30] Similarly, Spanish usage emerged in the late 15th century, as evidenced by Columbus's 1490s journals referring to indigenous Caribbeans and Africans as negros based on skin tone, though it increasingly specified enslaved Africans imported to the Americas after 1501 to address labor demands following indigenous population declines from disease and overwork.^[21] During the colonial era, negro in Spanish administrative documents, such as Mexican viceregal records from 1519 to 1650, denoted enslaved Africans and their descendants, reflecting a legal classification tied to perpetual servitude amid labor shortages; by 1570, over 200,000 Africans had been imported to Spanish America, with negro distinguishing them from indio (indigenous) and mulato (mixed) categories in casta systems that codified racial hierarchies for taxation and social control.^[38] In Portuguese Brazil, established as a colony in 1500, negro similarly connoted servile status, frequently serving as a synonym for escravo (slave), with colonial laws from the 1530s onward applying it to imported Africans—numbering about 4.8 million by 1888—and occasionally to indigenous peoples perceived as dark-skinned and labor-suitable, blurring ethnic lines under economic imperatives rather than strict biological racism.^[32]^[66] This usage persisted in both empires, where negro implied enslaveability, as Portuguese and Spanish codes like the 1680 Filipino negro classifications and Brazil's 1755 negro da terra distinctions reinforced it as a marker of subjugation over neutral description.^[67] In contemporary Spanish-speaking Latin America, negro remains a common, often neutral term for individuals of African descent, lacking the derogatory weight it acquired in English due to historical associations with Jim Crow-era oppression; surveys and linguistic studies from countries like Mexico and Colombia indicate its routine use in everyday speech without implied offense, rooted in its direct translation as "black" rather than evolving euphemisms.^[68] In Brazil, negro has been politicized since the 1970s through movements like the Movimento Negro Unificado, adopting it as an inclusive identity encompassing preto (darker-skinned) and pardo (mixed) populations for advocacy against inequality, as formalized in the 2010 Estatuto da Igualdade Racial, which promotes negro in official racial equality policies to unify Afro-descendants comprising about 56% of the population per 2022 census data—contrasting with preto's more literal color focus. This retention reflects linguistic continuity from colonial descriptors, where causal ties to slavery have faded into descriptive utility, unlike Anglo-American shifts driven by civil rights rejections of outdated terms.^[69]

Other European Languages: French, Italian, and Germanic Variants

In French, the term nègre derives from Spanish negro, entering the language in the 16th century as a descriptor for black-skinned individuals, often in colonial contexts such as trade records and administrative documents from the 17th and 18th centuries in the Caribbean and Africa./100/316371/Negre-Noir-Black-Renoi-Negro) It coexisted with noir (the general word for "black," from Latin niger), but nègre specifically denoted people of sub-Saharan African descent, appearing neutrally in literature and official usage until the mid-20th century, as in Aimé Césaire's 1950 essay Discours sur le colonialisme, where it referenced colonized populations without inherent pejorative intent.^[70] Post-1960s decolonization, nègre acquired derogatory connotations in metropolitan France due to associations with slavery and racism, leading to legal restrictions; by 1970, it was prosecutable as an insult under hate speech laws, though some Francophone African and Haitian communities reclaimed variants like négro for self-identification, denoting resilience rather than offense.^[71] This shift reflects broader semantic evolution influenced by anti-colonial movements, contrasting with earlier empirical usage in ethnographic texts where it paralleled noir descriptively.^[72] In Italian, negro—an archaic variant of nero (from Latin niger, meaning "black")—was employed from the Renaissance onward to describe individuals of dark complexion, including Africans encountered via trade routes, as documented in 16th-century travelogues by explorers like Leo Africanus, translated into Italian editions by 1526.^[73] Until the 1960s, negro served as a standard, non-pejorative term in institutional and literary contexts, such as Benito Mussolini's 1930s colonial propaganda referring to Ethiopian subjects, where it denoted racial categorization without explicit slur. Post-World War II, influenced by American civil rights discourse and immigration from Africa, negro declined in favor of nero or di colore, becoming viewed as outdated or offensive by the 1980s; surveys by the Italian Academy of the Crusca in 2000 noted its rarity in polite speech, supplanted amid rising sensitivity to colonial legacies, though historical texts retain it as a factual descriptor.^[74] This parallels Romance language patterns, where color-based terms shifted from neutral ethnonyms to loaded due to 20th-century racial politics rather than inherent semantics. Germanic languages adopted equivalents like German Neger (from Dutch/Portuguese negro via 16th-century trade), entering usage around 1550 in Hans Staden's Brazil accounts describing African slaves, functioning neutrally as a descriptor for black Africans in ethnographic and missionary literature through the 19th century.^[75] In German, it appeared in over 200 titles of children's books and novels by 1900, such as Karl May's works, portraying "Neger" characters with exoticism but without systematic derogation, as affirmed in linguistic analyses of Weimar-era texts.^[76] Similar patterns held in Dutch (neger), used in VOC colonial records from 1600s Batavia, and Danish/Swedish variants until the 1970s. By the 1980s, amid anti-racism campaigns, Neger became taboo in Germany, with a 2013 Bundestag debate highlighting its offensiveness despite historical neutrality; replacements like Schwarzer emerged, driven by imported American sensitivities rather than native evolution, as older sources like 1940s Duden dictionaries list it descriptively.^[75] This transition underscores causal links to post-colonial guilt and media influence, with residual academic use in untranslated historical contexts.^[77]

Evolution and Decline in Modern Usage

Shift from "Negro" to "Black" in the 1960s-1970s

During the 1960s, amid escalating tensions within the Civil Rights Movement, African American activists increasingly rejected "Negro"—a term long standardized in formal discourse—as connoting subservience and assimilationist ideals, favoring "Black" to signify unapologetic racial pride and militancy.^[5]^[7] This linguistic pivot aligned with broader cultural assertions, including the "Black is Beautiful" campaign launched around 1966, which celebrated African physical traits and rejected Eurocentric beauty standards embedded in prior terminology.^[78] A pivotal moment occurred on June 16, 1966, when Stokely Carmichael, then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), delivered a speech in Greenwood, Mississippi, during the March Against Fear, coining the phrase "Black Power" and urging a departure from nonviolent integration toward community control and self-definition.^[6]^[79] This event marked the acceleration of the term "Black," with SNCC formally adopting "Black Power" rhetoric, influencing subsequent organizations like the Black Panther Party founded in 1966, which embodied the shift through armed self-defense and cultural nationalism.^[79] The phrase's dissemination via media coverage, including appearances on programs like Meet the Press, amplified its reach, prompting debates where "Negro" leaders like Roy Wilkins of the NAACP criticized it as divisive, yet it gained traction among younger activists disillusioned with gradualism.^[79] The adoption stemmed from a deliberate reclamation of identity, viewing "Negro" as a capitulation to white-imposed euphemisms that diluted African heritage, whereas "Black" evoked directness, resilience, and pan-African solidarity, as articulated in manifestos and speeches emphasizing self-naming as empowerment.^[80]^[7] Empirical shifts in usage followed: by the late 1960s, major publications like The New York Times began preferring "Black" in reporting on urban riots and protests, reflecting grassroots pressure rather than elite consensus, though resistance persisted among establishment figures like Martin Luther King Jr., who used both terms interchangeably until his 1968 assassination.^[6] Into the 1970s, the transition solidified institutionally, with cultural outputs like James Brown's 1968 hit "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud" topping R&B charts and embedding the term in popular lexicon, while academic and journalistic style guides updated accordingly, rendering "Negro" archaic by decade's end outside residual contexts like the United Negro College Fund.^[6] This era's change was not uniform, as surveys and oral histories reveal generational divides—older cohorts associating "Black" with extremism—yet its dominance reflected a causal link to heightened racial consciousness post-Watts Riot (1965) and assassinations, prioritizing authenticity over politeness in nomenclature.^[81]^[7]

Transition to "African American" and Contemporary Preferences

In December 1988, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson convened a meeting of Black leaders, including representatives from the NAACP and Operation PUSH, to advocate for replacing "Black" with "African American" as the preferred self-identifier, arguing it better honored ancestral ties to Africa and dignified the group's historical experience in the Americas.^[82]^[83] This push followed the earlier shift from "Negro" to "Black" during the 1960s Black Power movement, led by figures like Stokely Carmichael, who popularized "Black" in 1966 as a symbol of empowerment and rejection of assimilationist connotations associated with "Negro."^[84]^[6] Jackson's initiative gained traction in academic, governmental, and media contexts by the early 1990s, with institutions like the U.S. Census Bureau incorporating "Black or African American" as an option in the 1990 census, reflecting a formal acknowledgment amid ongoing debates over terminology.^[52] Despite initial enthusiasm, empirical surveys indicated limited widespread adoption among Black Americans. A 1991 Gallup poll found 72% preferred "Black," 15% favored "African American," and the remainder had no strong preference or chose other terms like "Afro-American" or "Negro."^[85] Subsequent polls reinforced this pattern: a 2019 Gallup survey showed 64% of Black respondents indifferent between "Black" and "African American," with those expressing a preference leaning toward "Black" for its simplicity and inclusivity across the diaspora.^[86] Younger respondents (ages 18-29) showed slightly higher support for "African American" at around 30% in early 1990s data, compared to 12% among those 50 and older, but overall indifference or preference for "Black" persisted across demographics.^[87]^[88] Contemporary preferences continue to favor "Black" in everyday and activist usage, particularly post-2013 with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, which emphasized "Black" for its global applicability to people of African descent regardless of U.S.-specific heritage.^[86] "African American," while retained in formal settings like academic writing and some policy documents for its ethnic specificity, is often critiqued for excluding non-U.S. Blacks or those without direct African lineage confirmation, such as Caribbean or recent African immigrants. Polls from the 2010s through 2020s, including those by Hart Research, consistently show 50-66% of Black Americans holding no preference, underscoring that term shifts are driven more by elite advocacy than grassroots consensus.^[89] This divergence highlights how linguistic preferences evolve through cultural movements rather than uniform imposition, with "Black" enduring as the more versatile and popularly embraced term.^[90]

Controversies and Semantic Shifts

Perceptions of Derogation Versus Neutrality

The term "Negro" was widely regarded as a neutral and formal descriptor for people of African descent in the United States from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century, frequently self-applied by Black leaders in advocacy contexts. Booker T. Washington, a leading Black educator and founder of the National Negro Business League in 1900, consistently used the term in his writings and speeches to denote Black Americans, emphasizing economic self-reliance without connoting inferiority.^[91] Similarly, Martin Luther King Jr. employed "Negro" over 15 times in his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech as a standard reference to Black citizens seeking civil rights, reflecting its acceptance within the civil rights movement at the time. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, operated alongside contemporaneous organizations like the National Negro Business League, where "Negro" served as interchangeable with "Colored" in formal nomenclature without evoking derogation.^[92] Perceptions began shifting in the 1960s amid the Black Power movement, which favored "Black" as a term evoking pride and militancy over the perceived passivity of "Negro," leading to its gradual stigmatization as outdated rather than inherently offensive. Gallup surveys from 1969 indicated that 50% of Black respondents preferred "Black" compared to 20% for "Negro," with the gap widening by the 1970s as "Negro" usage declined sharply in media and public discourse.^[86] This evolution aligned with broader cultural pressures, including advocacy from figures like Stokely Carmichael, who critiqued "Negro" for its associations with accommodationist strategies, though empirical data from the era showed no consensus on it as a slur equivalent to more explicit epithets. By the 1990s, preferences stabilized with "Black" or "African American" dominant, and "Negro" registering under 5% in polls, often among older cohorts.^[93] In contemporary usage, "Negro" is frequently perceived as derogatory in American English due to its archaic tone and linkage to pre-civil rights era paternalism, prompting institutional avoidance; the U.S. Census Bureau removed it from forms in 2013 after research revealed younger Black respondents (under 50) viewed it negatively, while a minority of older individuals remained neutral.^[9] However, neutrality persists in specific historical or scholarly contexts, such as references to the Negro leagues in baseball (active until 1960) or W.E.B. Du Bois's 1940 essay defending "Negro" as a dignified self-identifier against imposed alternatives.^[94] Divergent viewpoints endure within Black communities, with some commentators attributing the term's taboo status to linguistic evolution driven by activism rather than intrinsic malice, as evidenced by its non-pejorative origins in Romance languages denoting "black" descriptively. Surveys like those from Pew Research in 2010 underscore no uniform offensiveness, with acceptability varying by age, region, and context, challenging blanket characterizations of derogation.^[95]

Debates on Political Correctness and Linguistic Taboos

The designation of "Negro" as a linguistic taboo emerged prominently during the late 20th century, coinciding with broader shifts in racial nomenclature driven by the civil rights movement and subsequent cultural sensitivities. While the term had been a standard, capitalized self-identifier among African Americans from the early 20th century—endorsed by figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, who argued in 1928 correspondence that it accurately denoted racial distinction without inherent inaccuracy—its decline accelerated after Stokely Carmichael's 1966 popularization of "Black Power," rendering it socially unacceptable by the mid-1980s in mainstream discourse.^[94]^[6] This evolution reflects not empirical evidence of harm akin to physical violence or systemic oppression, but subjective perceptions of datedness, often amplified by institutional pressures to align with evolving preferences for "Black" or "African American." Critics of the taboo contend that equating "Negro" with slurs like the n-word conflates historical neutrality with derogation, imposing coercive norms that stifle candid discussion. Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, in his 2021 book Say It Loud! and related essays, deliberately employs "Negro" to challenge what he describes as faddish intolerance and unwillingness toward self-criticism in racial discourse, arguing that such terms' acceptability should derive from context and intent rather than totemic prohibition.^[96]^[97] Kennedy's stance highlights a meta-issue: mainstream academic and media institutions, often exhibiting left-leaning biases, may overstate offensiveness to enforce conformity, as seen in a 2020 Uppsala University case where a lecturer faced discipline for using the Swedish equivalent "negro" in a historical lecture on African Americans, prompting backlash over academic freedom.^[98] Empirical data on preferences underscores the debate's nuance, revealing no monolithic consensus on taboo status. A 2020 Gallup analysis of surveys from the 1990s onward found that while "Black" was the most favored identifier among Black Americans (preferred by 50-70% in various polls), "Negro" ranked lowest but retained minimal self-identification among older respondents, with no evidence of widespread visceral rejection comparable to the n-word's slur connotations.^[86] Similarly, 2010 Pew Research on census terminology noted contention over retaining "Negro" as an option—advocated by some for continuity despite critics labeling it derogatory—yet federal standards under the Clinton administration in 1997 included it optionally to accommodate self-reported identities, a policy persisting amid debates over government forms' role in perpetuating or retiring terms.^[95]^[99] Proponents of the taboo argue it evokes Jim Crow-era subjugation, yet counterarguments emphasize causal realism: linguistic shifts correlate with activism rather than inherent toxicity, as evidenced by prior terms like "colored" transitioning from acceptability to obsolescence without fixed moral valence.^[100] Incidents like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's 2010 remark praising Barack Obama as a "light-skinned" African American "with no Negro dialect" illustrate enforcement dynamics, where the term's utterance drew condemnation despite lacking epithetic intent, fueling discussions on whether political correctness prioritizes performative sensitivity over substantive dialogue.^[6] Within scholarly circles, JSTOR-documented analyses from the 1970s trace nomenclature debates to identity assertion, with "Negro" viewed as a dignified, capitalized marker by mid-century Black leaders before "Black" symbolized militancy; today, residual defenses—often from conservative or contrarian Black intellectuals—frame the taboo as an overreach that homogenizes diverse viewpoints, potentially marginalizing those who find neutral utility in historical precision.^[101] This tension persists globally, where non-English variants retain descriptive neutrality longer, underscoring that taboos are culturally contingent rather than universally grounded in linguistics or ethics.

Divergent Viewpoints Within Black Communities

Within Black American communities, preferences for the term "Negro" have historically diverged along generational, ideological, and contextual lines, with some viewing it as a precise, neutral descriptor rooted in self-determination while others regard it as archaic or tainted by external impositions. In the early 20th century, leaders including Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois championed "Negro" over "Colored" to promote unified racial identity and dignity, influencing organizations like the NAACP, which adopted it despite retaining "Colored" in its name. ^[6] ^[94] This preference persisted into the mid-20th century; a 1968 Newsweek poll found over two-thirds of Black Americans favored "Negro," reflecting its status as the standard self-identifier before the Black Power era's push for "Black." ^[6] The shift accelerated in the 1960s–1970s, driven by activists like Stokely Carmichael, who emphasized "Black" for empowerment, leading to "Negro's" decline—by 1974, "Black" became the majority choice in polls. ^[6] Yet residual support endures, particularly among older generations; 1991 surveys showed minimal but nonzero preference for "Negro" (2%), with those over 50 least favoring "African American" (17% support versus 28% among 18–29-year-olds). ^[85] ^[102] Institutions like the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), established in 1944, have retained the term in their formal name despite branding shifts to initials in 2008 to navigate sensitivities, with leaders defending it as emblematic of heritage rather than derogation. ^[103] ^[104] Contemporary divergences include scholarly defenses of contextual use; education researcher Ivory Toldson, a Black academic, has stated that "Negro" is acceptable—and sometimes preferred—in formal, historical, or data-driven settings, such as census categories or academic discourse, without inherent offense. ^[105] This contrasts with broader community trends, where Gallup data from 1991–2019 indicate most Black adults (over 60%) express no strong preference between "Black" and "African American," but reject "Negro" amid perceptions of obsolescence, though without uniform taboo enforcement. ^[93] ^[86] Ideological splits emerge among Black conservatives and traditionalists, who critique rapid term changes as performative or externally dictated, prioritizing empirical continuity over evolving taboos, versus progressive factions aligning with post-1960s linguistic norms. ^[6] These tensions underscore internal debates on autonomy in self-labeling versus adaptation to societal pressures.

Current Status and Residual Applications

Official and Institutional Persistence

The United Negro College Fund (UNCF), founded in 1944 to support scholarships for black students at historically black colleges and universities, retains "Negro" in its official name and operates actively as of 2023, awarding financial aid to over 10,000 students annually across more than 1,100 institutions.^[106] This persistence reflects institutional inertia in established philanthropy, where the organization has raised billions in endowment funds without rebranding, ranking among America's top 100 charities per Forbes evaluations.^[103] U.S. federal guidelines permit "Negro" as an optional descriptor under the "Black or African American" racial category on official forms, as affirmed by 2017 Office of Management and Budget standards that explicitly allow its use if selected by respondents, avoiding mandates for newer terminology.^[99] This accommodation acknowledges preferences among older demographics, with the U.S. Census Bureau historically including the term in self-identification options to capture accurate data, as rationalized in responses to 2010 public feedback.^[6] In sports administration, Major League Baseball's 2020 designation of the Negro Leagues (operating 1920–1948) as a major league incorporated thousands of black players' statistics into official records, sustaining the term in institutional archives and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum's ongoing operations in Kansas City, Missouri.^[107] Such applications underscore archival and historical continuity, where altering nomenclature would necessitate revising decades of documented records.

Global Variations in Acceptability

In Spanish-speaking countries across Latin America, the term negro (and diminutives like negrito or negrita) is widely used as a neutral descriptor for individuals of dark skin or African descent, often without pejorative intent, reflecting its literal meaning of "black" derived from Latin niger. For instance, in Mexico, families routinely address dark-skinned relatives as negro or negra in everyday conversation, a practice documented in cultural analyses of racial terminology. Similarly, in Argentina, negro functions as a term of endearment applied broadly to friends or loved ones regardless of skin tone, embodying a cultural paradox where it conveys affection rather than derogation. This acceptability stems from historical linguistic continuity, where negro denotes color or phenotype without the slavery-associated stigma prevalent in English contexts, though some activists critique it for potential veiled racism tied to colonial legacies. In Portuguese-speaking Brazil, negro holds official status in racial classification systems, such as the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) census, where it encompasses individuals identifying as black (preto) or of mixed African ancestry (pardo), promoting self-identification without widespread offense. This contrasts with the United States, where English "Negro" declined sharply post-1960s; Brazilian usage persists in media, politics, and social discourse, supported by data from demographic surveys showing over 10% of the population selecting negro in 2010 and 2022 censuses. In French-speaking regions, acceptability varies sharply: while the Négritude movement of the 1930s–1950s, led by figures like Aimé Césaire, reclaimed nègre as a symbol of cultural pride against colonial dehumanization, contemporary France favors noir to avoid associations with historical slurs. In Francophone Africa, such as Senegal or Haiti, nègre appears in literature and pidgin forms like petit nègre but carries pejorative undertones in urban settings, prompting shifts toward noir or local ethnic terms amid post-colonial sensitivities. Germanic-language contexts exhibit a trajectory toward taboo: in the Netherlands and Germany, neger (cognate to "Negro") was historically neutral for sub-Saharan Africans but has become largely unacceptable since the 2000s, with dictionaries like Duden noting its derogatory shift amid debates over cultural figures like Zwarte Piet. Norwegian discussions from 1970–2014 similarly trace neger's fall from descriptive use to racial insult, driven by anti-racism campaigns equating it to English slurs. These evolutions highlight how European post-war multiculturalism and U.S.-influenced sensitivity amplified perceptions of offense, contrasting with Romance-language persistence.

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Apr 24, 2018 · In both Brazil and Spanish America, the word “negro” became synonymous with “slave,” and this equation of black racial status with slavery ...
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Feb 1, 2011 · Negro is used in the cultural context of Brazilian Portuguese, and constitutes a linguistic conundrum when translated into English. In ...
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(PDF) Why the word "nègre" tends to be more accepted in French ...
In our opinion, this re-appropriation of the word "nègre" was done in French, but not in English. When we call ourselves "nègre" among Haitians, yes that ...Missing: language | Show results with:language
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Nov 13, 2020 · When we call ourselves “nègre” among Haitians, yes that means a man, and even more, a combative, resilient man. And yes, it is a source of pride.
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Translating Race on the French Stage | Comparative Literature
Dec 1, 2021 · If Philcox rightly points out that Farrington's use of Negro to translate both the racial slur nègre and the ascriptive identity noir in other ...
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32 The uses of niger and fuscus to describe non-Negro people may be summarized as follows: (1) to designate the brown or blackish skin of non-European peoples; ...Missing: etymology language
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Nigger - Wikipedia
The origin of the word lies with the Latin adjective niger ([ˈnɪɡɛr]), meaning "black". It was initially seen as a relatively neutral term, essentially ...
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Help, the expression “persona di colore” is considered racist? Or is it ...
Nov 13, 2021 · "Negro" used to be the common term to refer to people with dark skin. It's now considered a racial slur pretty much everywhere in Italy. You'd ...What words should I avoid in Italian? : r/italianlearning - RedditHow did the term "n*gger" become derogatory towards black people?More results from www.reddit.com
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Mar 13, 2013 · It was neger, describing a black boy. It is true that it can mean "negro" in German, but it also means the utterly offensive "nigger".Missing: Germanic | Show results with:Germanic
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Periodizing and Historicizing German Afro-Americanophilia
Racial stereotypes about the 'Neger' and binary oppositions about white and black certainly played a role, but the cultural practice of reception had other ...Missing: Germanic | Show results with:Germanic
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The term negro means the color black in Spanish and Portuguese (from Latin niger), where English took it from. The term can be viewed as offensive, inoffensive, ...
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When they use the term Neger, they argue that it has been around hundreds of years. Then I have to explain to them the brutality of it all, but I am sup- posed ...
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He knows what white power is and he ought to know what black power is” (“Negro Leaders on 'Meet the Press'”). In the ensuing weeks, both SNCC and the Congress ...<|separator|>
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Sep 10, 2021 · Presently, “African American” and “Black” have largely replaced the terms “Colored” and “Negro,” yet the question of respect continues to be an ...
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Most of us became familiar with the ethnonym African American in the 1980s, when Jesse Jackson began popularizing it as an alternative to black.
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In the 1960s, there was a shift from the use of "Negro" to the use of "black" as a group identifier. In 1966 Stokely Carmichael shouted the phase "Black Power."
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Jan 29, 1991 · 72 percent preferred black, 15 percent African-American, 3 percent Afro-American and 2 percent Negro, with the rest giving no opinion or other responses.
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Gallup Vault: Black Americans' Preferred Racial Label
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[PDF] changing racial labels from "colored" to "negro" to - GSS
30 percent o f Blacks 18-29 years,. 21 percent age 30-49, and 12 percent age 50+ preferred the term. "African American." Similarly. in the 1991 Gallt~p poll 23 ...
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Black Americans' Preference for "African-American," "Black," or Another Term (1990 - 2011). Hart and McInturff Research Companies, Hart-Teeter Research ...<|separator|>
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Apr 2, 2021 · Jesse Jackson, the civil rights activist, promoted the term “African American” as a way to contextually dignify the origin of Black people in the Americas.
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Washington, in turn, secretly used his wealth and power to finance challenges to Jim Crow laws and invest in selected black newspapers. Washington gained ...
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Since our founding in 1909, we have been, and continue to be, on the front lines of the fight for civil rights and social justice.
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Aug 4, 2021 · Gallup primarily used the term "negro" in early decades of polling, including its very first question about Black people in 1939, though the ...
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He argued that “Negro” and “N_____” were “white man's words” meant to stamp black people with a badge of inferiority. He recommended the magazine substitute “ ...
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Jan 21, 2010 · “Black or Negro” became “Black, African Am., or Negro” marking the first appearance of “African-American” on the Census form. The three Native ...
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Randall Kennedy speaks his mind in his new book, 'Say It Loud!'
Sep 30, 2021 · They're going to say, “Does he really use the term 'Negro'?” “Does he really use the term 'Colored'?” The answer is yes. I wrote an essay ...
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A Conversation With Randall Kennedy - The American Prospect
Mar 27, 2025 · ... term “Negro.” The penchant for coerciveness, the unwillingness to be self-critical, and the susceptibility to faddishness displayed by many ...
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Lecturer is told that the word 'negro' can never be used
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Dec 13, 2017 · "Negro," however, is not forbidden on federal forms today. In fact, the term is an option that "can be used if desired" to describe the "black" category.Missing: 20th | Show results with:20th
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It appears, from this short historical sketch, that the word. "Negro" has been a generally acceptable term in the black or, if you prefer, the Negro ...<|separator|>
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Use of "African-American' is not preferred by blacks, poll finds
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Turning 80, United Negro College Fund Stages A Revival - Forbes
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Revising a Name, but Not a Familiar Slogan - The New York Times
Jan 17, 2008 · And while the fund is not prepared to drop the word “Negro” from its name, it plans to try to shift attention away from it. A branding effort ...
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Nov 8, 2022 · Using the term “Negro” is acceptable, and even preferred in the proper context. This word was once commonly used in reference to people of African descent.Missing: divergent | Show results with:divergent
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Who We Are - UNCF
UNCF is the nation's largest and most effective minority education organization.
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The year America confronted racism - CNN
Dec 16, 2020 · Major League Baseball recognized the Negro Leagues as a major league and will count the statistics and records of thousands of Black players as ...Missing: documents | Show results with:documents