"When I was growing up, the good people of my parents' generation all referred to them as "the colored." (I don't know what the Bad Guys, the racists, called them in those days, since I had never met one: perhaps, after all, "nigger.") But us younger progressives regarded "colored" as racist and Uncle Tom, for some reason that I've never grasped: we used the Good word "Negro." No sooner had "Negro" swept the boards, however, and "colored" been vanquished, when the radical blacks of the late 60s denounced the good old word "Negro" as racist and Uncle Tom and insisted on the word "black." (Although, oddly enough, in older decades, "black" was considered terribly racist and pejorative, referring as it did to color.) Finally, after a sharp but short fight, "black" was triumphant, and "Negro" sent to the brig, beyond the pale of civilized people.
From the point of view of the average American, the word "black" had a great advantage: it has only one syllable. But, a couple of years ago, the black leadership put their heads together and decided that "black" was now racist and Uncle Tom, and that the only satisfactory term is "African-American." No guys, no way. No way that a word of seven syllables "Af-ri-can A-mer-i-can" is going to replace a word of one syllable. Never. There are still some verities that the average American holds to with great firmness; and contracting syllables is one of them.
I see signs on the horizon that "African-American" might already be obsolete, and that a new phrase is coming onto the horizon. Get this, it's: "people of color." So: after a hundred years of putting us through the hoops the upshot is almost the same phrase with which we started, oh so long ago. Except that for the two syllable "col-ored" we now have the five-syllable "people of co-lor." I suppose some would call that "progress."
NEVER SAY "JAP"!, Essays of Murray N. Rothbard
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