User talk:Filll/blackpplterm

One difficulty in trying to understand the role of black people in the world and their history is the profusion of different terminology and disagreements about what is a black person.

Process of pejoration
Part of the difficulty in dealing with terms to use when referring to a group, particularly one that has been subject to discrimination, is that the terms that were common, standard and accepted over time have a tendency to develop negative connotations. This is the well-known process in linguistics known as pejoration.

In the case of African Americans, this can be observed by surveying the most common and accepted terms to refer to African Americans over the last century. In the late 1800s, it was common to call African Americans "colored". It was from this that we obtained the well known organization, the NAACP. The NAACP was founded by African Americans to protect their rights and advance their cause of equality.

This term fell out of favor in time. By the founding of the United Negro College Fund in 1944, the term "negro" was more politically correct than the seemingly archaic and tainted phrase, "colored".

However, by the 1960s, "negro" was displaced by a new term, "black". There was a profusion of organizations that used the word "black", including the Black Panthers, the Black Power movement, the Black Muslims, etc. This word inspired the catchphrase, Black is beautiful.

Then in the 1970s, the word "black" fell out of favor and was replaced by the phrase "Afro American". This was captured in the name for a well known hairstyle, the "afro". However, this did not help particularly as the hairstyle went out of style at the end of the 1970s, probably contributing a somewhat stale and archaic sense to the phrase. By the early 21st century, the "Afro" is mainly a focus of jokes about hip-hugging bell bottoms and paisley shirts and disco dancing.

Jesse Jackson in the early 1980s decided that the phrase "Afro American" did not place African Americans on an equal footing with other ethnic groups in US society. For example, it was normal to encounter German Americans and Italian Americans and Swedish Americans. But African Americans were saddled with either the outdated "colored" or "negro" or even worse, the term Afro American, attached to an unfashionable hairstyle. None of these described accurately the physical origin of the ancestors of the African Americans. Jackson therefore proposed that since this group was of African ancestry, that the phrase "African American" be adopted. This suggestion was widely adopted and continues to be the favored phrase in US society.

List of ethnic slurs
There have been a long list of ethnic slurs used against black people and people with some black or African ancestry. It is not possible to do more than produce a partial list.
 * Kaffir
 * Coon
 * Coolie
 * Colored
 * nigger
 * Sambo (ethnic slur)
 * golliwog

Use of the term "black people" for people with dark colored skins
The most common use the term "black people is to refer to people with dark colored skins.

Other uses of the term black
The word "black" has been used often to refer to many different groups of people. For example, swarthy or dark haired Scandanvians have often been called "black" historically. For example, here are some names of some Vikings; Bjorn the Black, Geirmund Hjorsson Dark-Skin, Hermund Illugason the Black, Illugi Hallkelsson the Black, Ottar Svarti (the Black), Thorolf Dark-Skin, Thorstein the Black, Harold the Black of Islay, Halfdan the Black, Rokar the Swarthy, Sandulf the Black, Harald II Svarte (the Black), Godfred V the Black, and Olaf II Odhar the Black.

There was a prominent theory that the Irish were closer to the Africoid race. The Irish were even referred to as Black Irish. In a similar way, the phrases Black Dutch, Black Scotch, Black German have sometimes been used.

A swarthy group from the Appalachian region of the United States that is sometimes said to have some African ancestry are the Melungeons.

The people of the Caucasus region in Central Asia also are called "black".

There is a historic record of black people in china

There are many sayings about Japanese samurai that they need to have some black heritage.

The term "black" is used by African Americans to refer to people of their ethnic group and describe their culture. Some African Americans deny that this has anything to do with skin color, since some of them are very light-skinned and can pass. They align themselves with the West African peoples where many of their forebearers originated.

Jamaican immigrants in the New York City area often refer to African Americans as "blacks", even though the African Americans are usually far lighter-skinned than the Jamaican immigrants.