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4.3 Terms no longer in common use
The term Negro, which was widely used until the 1960s, today generally is considered inappropriate and derogatory. Once widely considered acceptable, it fell into disfavor for reasons already herein stated. The self-referential term of preference for Negro became black. Another objection to the term is that it too easily can be misprounced unintentionally or by design to sound like nigra a Southern euphemism for nigger, the much-detested slur.
Negroid is an anthropological term related to Negro, once in common use to describe indigenous Africans and their descendants throughout the African diaspora. As with most descriptors of race based on outmoded phenotypical standards, however, the term is often meaningless in various contexts and, though still in use, generally is considered scientifically and socially atavistic.
Other largely defunct, seldom used terms to refer to African-Americans are mulatto and colored. The term mulatto originally was used to mean the offspring of a "pure African black" and a "pure European white". The Latin root of the word is mulo, as in "mule", implying incorrectly that, like mules, which are horse-donkey hybrids, mulattoes are sterile crosses of two different species. For example, in the early twentieth century, African-American leaders such as Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, who had slaves as mothers and white fathers, were referred to as mulattoes. While not as common as "mixed" or "biracial," or even "multiracial," mulatto is still used to refer to people of mixed parentage and, despite its origin, is not considered derogatory.
The term quadroon referred to a person who is one-fourth African in descent, perhaps someone born to a Caucasian father and a mulatto mother. Someone of one-eighth African descent was technically an octoroon, although the term was used to refer to any white person with even a hint of black ancestry.
With the end of slavery, there was no commercial incentive to classify blacks by their African-European ancestral admixture. Though mulatto and terms with the -roon suffix persisted in a social context for a number of decades, by the mid twentieth century, they no longer were in general use.
The terms colored, black and negro meant any slave or descendant of a slave, regardless of racial mixture. Eventually in the U.S, the terms mulatto, colored, negro, Negro, black, and African-American all have come to mean people with any known black African ancestry.
The descriptive term Black American has never been common in the US: black American and white American are used only when the writer or speaker feels the need to emphasize both race and that they are speaking specifically of Americans.
5 See also
6 External links
U.S. ethnic groups
