Colored

This article is about a term used in the United States. For the term used for an ethnic group in Southern Africa, see Coloureds. For other use, see color (disambiguation).

Colored or coloured is a term historically used in the United States during the racial segregation times, especially in the South. It was commonly used to describe people who do not have white skin or a Caucasian appearance (non-white) and also people with mixed racial heritage. This usually meant black African Americans, although the terms have also been applied to members of other non-white races as well. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word colored was first used in the 14th Century, but with a completely different meaning not related to race or ethnicity. Since the 1960s, the term "colored", along with "Negro" and other historical racial/ethnic classifications such as "Eskimo" and "Gypsies", has fallen out of popular usage in the United States over the last third of the 20th century, and is now often considered archaic and potentially derogatory, except in certain narrow circumstances, such as the name of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In other English-speaking countries, the term has varied meanings. In South Africa, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the name Coloured (often capitalized) refers both to a specific ethnic group of complex mixed origins, which is considered neither black nor white, and in other contexts (usually lower case) to people of mixed race, including African Americans; in neither context is its usage considered derogatory. In British usage, the term refers to "a person who is wholly or partly of non-white descent" and its use may be regarded as antiquated or offensive, and other, more politically correct terms, such as people of colour, are preferable, particularly when referring to a single ethnicity.

History in North America

The term colored appeared in North America during the colonial era. A "colored" man halted a runaway carriage that was carrying President John Tyler on March 4, 1844. In 1851, an article in The New York Times referred to the "colored population". In 1863, the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops. The first 12 Census counts in the U.S. enumerated '"colored" people, who totaled nine million in 1900. The Census counts of 1910–1960 enumerated "negroes".

"It's no disgrace to be colored", the black entertainer Bert Williams famously observed early in the century, "but it is awfully inconvenient."

"Colored people lived in three neighborhoods that were clearly demarcated, as if by ropes or turnstiles", wrote Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. about growing up in segregated West Virginia in the 1960s. "Welcome to the Colored Zone, a large stretched banner could have said... Of course, the colored world was not so much a neighborhood as a condition of existence."

"For most of my childhood, we couldn't eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn't use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores", recalls Gates. His mother retaliated by not buying clothes she was not allowed to try on. He remembered hearing a white man deliberately calling his father by the wrong name. "'He knows my name, boy,' my father said after a long pause. 'He calls all colored people George.'" When Gates' female cousin became the first black cheerleader at the local high school, she was not allowed to sit with the team in a Naugahyde booth and drink Coke from a glass, but had to stand at the counter drinking from a paper cup. Professor Gates also wrote about his experiences in his 1995 book, Colored People: A Memoir.

In the United Kingdom

The term, spelled coloured, has the same meaning as it did in the United States, and fell out of favor roughly around the same time.

Some people within the Commonwealth of Nations have used the term "coloured" to refer to people from Africa, India, Pakistan, Aboriginal Australians, Asians in general, and American Indians.

In Southern Africa

Further information: Coloureds

In South Africa, the term Coloured is used exclusively to refer to people of mixed-race, or Khoisan descent, with the term black used for black Africans. "Coloured" was one of the racial groups designated under the Apartheid system of racial segregation, along with "Black", "White" and "Indian". The term is not generally considered offensive in South Africa. Most Coloured South Africans have a cultural identity distinct both from that of Blacks and Whites; some (particularly those who have non-Coloured parents) may adopt the cultural identity of one (or both) of their parents.

The term "Coloured" is also used to describe persons of mixed race in Namibia, to refer to those of part Khoisan, part white descent. The Basters of Namibia constitute a separate ethnic group that are sometimes considered a sub-group of the Coloured population of that country. Under South African rule, the policies and laws of apartheid were extended to what was then called South-West Africa, and the treatment of Namibian Coloureds was comparable to that of South African Coloureds.

The term "Coloured" (or "Goffal") is also used in Zimbabwe, where, unlike in South Africa and Namibia, most people of mixed race have African and European ancestry, being descended from the offspring of European men and Shona and Ndebele women; under white minority rule in what was then Rhodesia, Coloureds had more privileges than black Africans, including full voting rights, but still faced discrimination. In Swaziland, the term Eurafrican is used.

In Swaziland, the term Eurafrican is used.

Modern usage

In the 21st century, colored is generally not regarded as a politically correct term. However, it lives on in the association name National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, generally called NAACP.

In 2008 Carla Sims, communications director for the NAACP in Washington, D.C., said "the term 'colored' is not derogatory, [the NAACP] chose the word 'colored' because it was the most positive description commonly used [in 1909, when the association was founded]. It's outdated and antiquated but not offensive." To date, there has not been a movement to change the name of the organization to use a different term.

See also

• African Americans
• Anglo-African term
• Black people
• Casta
• Coloured
• Eskimo
• Free people of color
• Gypsies
• Negro
• Non-Asian Minority
• Person of color
• United States Colored Troops