Is Negro an Offensive Word?

[Tropicana]

Cyaan baddah wait fi someone else to start this thread.

Think of it the only people referred to with a male and female form are:

- Negro and Negress
- Jew and Jewess

Should tell you something when that feminine/masculine construction is usually used for animals:

- Tiger and Tigress
- Lion and Lioness



So anyway.

- Is the word Negro offensive? I think yes.

- What about N + EDIT + ish? It's definitely insulting.

Okay let's explore why there is an issue with this word.


I think this says it all:

“I Used the Word 'Negro' and I was Firmly Corrected”

― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

[Tropicana]

POV 1

More concretely, within the context of the racial looking glass, the question is whether one can make the word "Negro' mean so many different things or whether one should abandon it and use the words "black" or "Afro-American."This question is at the root of a bitter national controversy over the proper designation for identifiable Americans of African descent. (More than 40 million "white" Americans, according to some scholars, have African ancestors.) A large and vocal group is pressing an aggressive campaign for the use of the word "Afro-American" as the only historically accurate and humanly significant designation of this large and pivotal portion of the American population. This group charges that the word "Negro" is an inaccurate epithet which perpetuates the master-slave mentality in the minds of both black and white Americans. An equally large, but not so vocal, group says the word "Negro" is as accurate and as euphonious as the words "black" and "Afro-American." This group is scornful of the premises of the advocates of change. A Negro by any other name, they say, would be as black and as beautiful--and as segregated. The times, they add, are too crucial for Negroes to dissipate their energy in fratricidal strife over names. But the pro-black contingent contends, with Humpty Dumpty, that names are of the essence of the game of power and control. And they maintain that a change in name will short-circuit the stereotyped thinking patterns that undergird the system of racism in America. To make things even more complicated, a third group, composed primarily of Black Power advocates, has adopted a new vocabulary in which the word "black" is reserved for "black brothers and sisters who are emancipating themselves," and the word "Negro" is used contemptuously for Negroes "who are still in Whitey's bag and who still think of themselves and speak of themselves as Negroes."
This controversy, which rages with religious intensity from the street corners of Harlem to the campuses of Southern colleges, has alienated old friends, split national organizations and disrupted national conventions. It was discussed with gravity at a meeting of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, and it is a matter of grave concern to prominent Negro leaders who have been heckled and publicly denounced for using the word "Negro."
Within the last year, several organizations have gone on record in opposition to continued use of the words. At the Racism in Education Conference of the American Federation of Teachers, the delegates unanimously endorsed a resolution which called on all educators, persons, and organizations to abandon the "slavery-imposed name" "Negro" for the terms "African American " or "Afro-American." A similar resolution was unanimously adopted at the National Conference on Black Power. But the Black Power conferees compounded the problem by insisting upon the substitution of the word "Black" for the word "Negro." There was additional ferment during this same this period on the local level where militant groups passed a variety of pro-black and pro-Afro-American resolutions and peppered newspapers and magazines with angry and, in some cases, abusive letters. Some pro-
Negro advocates charged indignantly that "the whole black issue was raised by a handful of intellectuals, none of whom are black, except for their beards." But it was obvious that the controversy touched deep emotions in the black community where many segments, particularly the young, are engaged in an agonizing search for self-identity and self-determination. Pressures from these groups and from black professionals gave the movement an edge that isolated nationalists, working alone, had never been able to forge. And it was in response to the growing edge of blackness that several organizations, some of them composed of black professionals, changed their letterheads to indicate the new vision they have of themselves and of their relation to Africa and America. The Negro Teachers Association of New York City, for example, became the African-American Teachers Association. More significantly, in terms of mass impact, the New York Amsterdam News, one of the largest black newspapers, announced that it would no longer use the word "Negro." The newspaper, which now identifies Americans of African descent as Afro-Americans, reports a favorable response to the change. Dick Edwards, the assistant managing editor, says letters are running nine to one in favor of Afro-American. "We like the word," he says, "because we are descendants of Africans and because we are Americans." He added: "There is a cringing from the word 'Negro,' especially by the young, because of the oppression into which we were born, and because that name was imposed on us. There seems to be violent objection to the term among young people, who link the word 'Negro' with Uncle Tom. They seldom use the word 'Negro.' They use 'Black' and 'African.' Some of them even object to the word 'Afro-American,' preferring the term 'Afram.'"
Is the name game real?

More to come

[Tropicana]

POV 1 (Cont'd)

Will it last?
Are there substantial grounds for the violent opposition to the word "Negro"?
To answer these questions and to relate them to the whole bubbling controversy, one must go back 400 years. For Americans of African descent have been arguing about names ever since they were forcibly transported from Africa by Europeans who arbitrarily branded them "Blackamoors," "Moors," "negers," and "negros." The English word "Negro" is a derivative of the Spanish and Portuguese word negro, which means black. The Portuguese and Spanish, who were pioneers in the African Slave Trade, used this adjective to designate the African men and women whom they captured and transported to the slave mart of the New World. Within a short time, the Portuguese word negro (no capital) became the English noun-adjective "negro." This word, which was not capitalized at first, fused not only humanity, nationality and place of origin but also certain white judgements about the inherent and irredeemable inferiority of the persons so designated The word also referred to certain Jim Crow places, i.e., the "negro pew" in Christian churches.
The reaction of the first Americans of African descent to the word "Negro" has never been adequately studied. But it appears from an examination of surviving documents that literate black people resisted the word with cunning and tenacity. The first black immigrants seem to have preferred the word "African." In surviving documents, they referred to themselves as "blacks," "blackes," and "Africans." And the first institutions organized by Americans of African descent were designated "African," viz., The Free African Society," "the African Methodist Episcopal Church," "The African Baptist Church." The preamble of the Free African Society, which was founded in Philadelphia in 1787, began: "We, the Free Africans and their descendants of the City of Philadelphia in the State of Pennsylvania or elsewhere. . . ."
The tentative efforts of Americans of African descent to define themselves in African terms were reversed suddenly and dramatically in the first two decades of the 19th century. When the American Colonization Society organized a movement to send free Africans "back" to Africa, the colored community reacted by abandoning the word African in favor of the words "coloured" and/or "free persons of colour." In 1835, the fifth annual convention of the colored people of America passed a resolution which recommended "as far as possible, to our people to abandon use of the word 'colored,' when either speaking or writing concerning themselves; and especially to remove the title of African from their institutions,, the marbles of churches, and etc. . . ." Philadelphia leaders later recommended use of the term "Oppressed Americans." This advice was scorned by militant colored leaders. "Oppressed Americans!" snorted Samuel Cornish, "who are they? Nonsense brethren! You are COLORED AMERICANS. The Indians are. RED AMERICANS, and the white people are WHITE AMERICANS and you are as good as they, and they are no better than you."
The "oppressed Americans" were routed by the "colored Americans," and the term "colored" became the dominant word in the colored community for the rest of the nineteenth century. There were, to be sure, dissents. Frederick Douglass, the leading colored public figure, used the word "Negro" occasionally--and some eccentrics experimented with terms like "Anglo-African.' For reasons that were probably connected with the tendency of "the free people of color" to withdraw from the great masses of freedmen, there was a sharp reaction to the word "colored" in the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. For a short spell, the term "Negro" occupied roughly the same place in Negro life as the words "black" and "Afro-American" occupy today. In other words, it was a term of militancy, selfconsciously used by black men defiantly asserting their pride of race. We are told, for example, that Blanche Kelso Bruce, the first black man to serve a full term in the U. S. Senate, refused to use the word "colored," saying: "I am a Negro, and proud of my race." Bruce's example was not followed by all Reconstruction leaders. In the North Carolina constitutional convention of 1888, James Walker Hood, one of 15 black delegates, denied that "there was a Negro on the floor of the Convention." Outraged and insulted, he insisted "that the word Negro had no significance as to color, but could only be used in a reproachful or degrading sense, and he further declared that no man on that floor knew where the-term originated, since it was not found in ancient history, inspired or profane." In the South Carolina constitutional convention of the same year, T. J. Coghlan, a radical white Southerner, offered a resolution which urged that steps be taken to "expunge forever from the vocabulary of South Carolina, the epithets 'EDIT,' 'negro,' and 'yankee' . . . and to punish this insult by fine and imprisonment."

More to come.

[Tropicana]

POV 1 (Cont'd)

Although the word "Negro" became a generally acceptable designation in the l930s, there was strong opposition from militant radicals like Adam Clayton Powell, who continued to use the word "black," and from militant nationalists like Elijah Muhammad, who continued to speak of "so-called Negroes." This opposition, inchoate and unorganized, was sharpened in the '50s and '60s by the rhetorical artistry of Malcolm X and the emergence of the Black Power movement. But MalcoIm X and the Black Power movement were reflections of a general crisis of identity which is similar in tone and urgency to the crises of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th.

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 community for relatively short time. It appears also that there has been continuous and sustained opposition to the term. Contemporary critics of the word "Negro" say Booker T. Washington was primarily responsible for the campaign in which the word "Negro" supplanted the the words "black," "colored," and "Afro-American." There is truth in this -- the Negro Year Book and the Negro Business League were Washington projects -- but it is not the whole truth. The movement for adoption of the word "Negro" was also given a strong impetus by militant radicals like W. E. B. Du Bois, who was one of the founders of the American Negro Academy, and militant nationalists like Marcus Garvey, who used the word "Negro" consistently and named his organization the Universal Negro Improvement Association. As a matter of fact, the classic argument in favor of the word "Negro" was artic

Perhaps the most articulate exponent of this view is Keith Baird, the young Afro-American expert of the New York City Board of Education. According to Baird, "The continuing depressed economic and social status of the African people in America, enforced and maintained by the dominant European-originated Americans, is symbolized and instrumentally promoted by thy continuing use of the déclassé designation 'Negro.'" Baird adds: "The militant efforts being made by Americans of African descent require attention in respect of every fact or factor which confers the status of humanity on the individual--the right and power to obtain and enjoy the physical necessities of life as well as the psychological. Positive and enhancing self-regard is a psychological necessity of life, and the name borne by any individual or group can be an effective vehicle and symbol of group or individual self-regard."Baird cites an impressive array of scholars, including Benjamin Lee Whorf, in support of his contention that language tends to prestructure thinking and acting. "We say," he adds, "that we speak as we think. In fact, we tend to think as we speak." The meaning of a word, or expression, he continues, "Is what it does, that is, the effect which it produce in its hearers.... A name can determine the nature of the response given to it by virtue of the associations which its use conjures up." Baird does not claim that the adoption of the word "Afro-American" will solve the American race problem. He does believe, however, that it will make a significant difference in the internal economies of black and white Americans. "The very act and fact of changing the designation," he says, "will cause the individual to be redesignated, to be reconsidered, not only in terms of his past and his present but hopefully in terms of his future." He adds: "Designation has an important bearing on destiny."
Baird objects to the word "Negro" on two grounds. 1) The word "Negro" is a slave-oriented epithet which was imposed on Americans of African descent by slavemasters. "The word came into use," Baird says, "in connection with the enslavement of the African in the New World. The use of the word became connected with what Earl Conrad has so well called the "Negro-Concept," that grotesque conception of the African which has been shaped in the mind of the European and forced with Procrustean cruelty on the person and personality of the black American."
2) The word "Negro" is not geographically or culturally specific. "Historically," he says, "human groups have been named according to the land from which they originated .... The unwillingness of the dominant group to recognize the humanity of the African is evidenced by the fact that when it is necessary or desired to identify Americans in terns of the land of their origin, terms such as Italian-American, Polish-American, Spanish-American, Jewish-American (referring back to the ancient kingdom and culture of Judaea), etc., are employed. In the American mind there is no connection of the black American with land, history and culture--factors which proclaim the humanity of an individual." Baird denies that the English word "Negro" is a synonym for black. He says. "'Negro' does not mean simply 'black,' which would be the simple, direct opposite of 'white.' We talk about a 'white man' or a 'white Cadillac'; we may talk, as many unfortunately do, of a 'Negro man,' but never of a 'Negro Cadillac.'
Baird believes the word "Afro-American" will supplant the word "Negro." He does not object to the term "black," which, he says, lacks the historical and cultural precision of the word "Afro-American." He is supported in this view by Richard Moore, Harlem bookstore owner and author of The Name "Negro"--It's Origin and Evil Use. Moore says the word "Negro" is so "saturated with filth," so "polluted" with the white man's stereotypes, that "there is nothing to be done but to get rid of it." He prefers the word "Afro-American" because of its "correctness, exactness, even elegance." He believes the adoption of the word will force "these prejudiced European-Americans" to reevaluate black people in terms of their history and culture. "Black," Moore said, "is a loose color designation which is not connected with land, history, and culture. While I recognize it as a step forward in getting rid of the term 'Negro,' I think it is necessary to take the next step."
To take the next step, whatever that step might be, millions of Americans of African descent are going to have to search their souls and their internal maps. At the request of Ebony Magazine, Ossie Davis, the playwright-actor, searched his soul and came up with the following passionately eloquent statement:

• I am a Negro. I am clean, black and I smile a lot. Whenever I want something--to get a job in motion pictures, for instance, or on television or to get a play produced on Broadway, whenever I need a political favor--I go to white folks. White folks have money. I do not. White folks have power. I do not. All of my needs -- financial, artistic, social my need for freedom -- I must depend on white folks to supply. That is what is meant by being a Negro.Malcolm X used to be a Negro, but he stopped. He no loner depended on white folks to supply his needs -- psychologically or sociologically -- to give him money or lead his fight for freedom or to protect him from his enemies or to tell him what to do. Malcolm X did not hate white folks, nor did he love them. Most of all, he did not need to tell them who he was. Above all, he was determined to make it on his own. That was why Malcolm was no longer a Negro. Malcolm was a man, a black man! A black man means not to accept the system as Negroes do but to fight hell out of the system as Malcolm did. It can be dangerous. Malcolm was killed for it. Nevertheless, I like Malcolm much better than I like myself.

In this statement, Ossie Davis, who is considered a black man by the leaders of the pro-black movement, adds a new and personal dimension to the controversy which will be settled finally by the internal movement of Americans of African descent. And in the course of that movement, on one level or another, every "Negro" and/or "black" and/or "Afro-American" is going to have to choose a name in the process of choosing his being.
Who are you?
What is your name?

Source: http://www.virginia.edu/woodson/cour...es/bennett.htm

[Tropicana]

A Jamaican man calls him out at the beginning of the video:

[Tropicana]

Origin of terms 'Negro' and Afrika

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
January 09, 2007

According to Anthony T. Browder in From 'The Browder File: 22 Essays on the African-American Experience' (2000), "...the Portuguese were the first to enslave Afrikans and they were the first to call them Negroes. When the Spanish became involved in the slave trade, they also used the word Negro to describe Afrikans. Negro is an adjective which means Black in Portuguese and Spanish. But since 1444 and the beginning of the slave trade, the adjective Negro became a noun and the legitimate name of a newly enslaved people." (p.1).

The fact of the matter is that under Euro-centrism, "...the word for Black was typically associated with aspects of death. The word death is derived from the Greek word Necro which means dead and is similar in sound and meaning to the word Negro."

As part of "the manifestation of the evil genius of Europe," Euro-centric thought process deceitfully juxtaposed the words "Necro" and "Negro". "...to reference the physical, spiritual or mental death of a person, place or thing." (Ibid).

In his seminal opus titled 'The Name "Negro": Its Origin and Evil Use' (1972), Richard B. Moore documents that, "...it was in the development of this infamous, iniquitous and inhuman slave traffic that the term 'Negro' was foisted as a noun, as a designation, as a name, upon those who were unfortunate enough to be caught in the clutches of the (European) slave traders. This is the origin of the term 'Negro.' Its origin is vile and infamous. It began in indignity. It began in immorality and the consciousness and dignity of man must now rise and dispense with it forever."(p.37).

Indeed, the record reveals that when the Portuguese explorers went down the Afrikan coast until they reached below the Senegal river, they called the people whom they met "Moors" or "Azenegues." This name "was later transposed into English as Negroes."

By this name "Negroes", Afrikan slaves, "...were thereby branded as bestial and savage, innately inferior, fit by nature for slavery and indeed ordained by God himself for perpetual slavery." (p.40).

The word "Negro" is applied, "...also to the Black people of Afrika (but the ordinary term for 'Afrikan Negro' or 'Afrikan' were Aethiops and Afer)." It is very instructive to note that "...the word usually employed in the classical Latin language to designate people of Afrikan origin was "Afer" and not "Niger", as some who are addicted to the term 'Negro' would like to have us believe."(p.79).

Now, there is a difference in the use of the word "Negro" "as applied to slaves" and the term "Negro" "simply meaning Blacks."

Richard B. Moore elucidates as follows: "The same word 'Negroes' was used for both meanings in Portuguese and Spanish, whereas in English 'Negroes' was generally used for slaves and 'Blacks' for simple colour designation." (p.39).

In Euro-colonial countries, the word "Negro" had a specific meaning beyond the simple connotation of colour or skin. The expression, "He is a Negro," was equivalent to saying, "He is a slave". Since almost all the slaves in certain countries and epochs were "Negroes", "Negro" came to be synonymous with slave.(p.46).

Furthermore, the term "Negro" implies that Afrikans are a cursed people. And that, "...this curse was declared to be the true and undeniable word of God who had thereby condemned the Afrikans, said to be the sons of Ham, to perpetual slavery to the Europeans, conveniently held to be sons of Japheth and to Asian people, similarly deemed to be the sons of Shem." (p.40).

As deceased Afri-centric, Afrikan-American scholar/historian, Dr. John Henrik Clarke once admonished, "...dogs and slaves were named by their masters and that only free men named themselves." As the Afrikan adage suggests, "It's not what you call me but what I answer to."

Truth be told, Euro-Spanish-Portuguese-British colonialism and slavery have ended. Ergo, there is absolutely no need for some Trinbagonians to refer to each other as "Negro" either in Calypso or in daily greetings and interactions.

As Kwame Ture once instructed, "If you don't know who you are, you would not know what your interests are."

Trinbagonians also kicked out the Euro-British governor in 1962. TnT is now an independent, sovereign nation-state. The former colonized and enslaved are now in charge. It is to be hoped that the above-presented historical context of the term "Negro" and its negative, detrimental, inferior, powerlessness, nothingness connotations will compel Afrikan-Trinbagonians to reject this derogatory, demeaning, dehumanizing and insulting term and to embrace and internalize their innate Afrikanness. Mother Afrika to the rescue!.

In the very same way the term "Negro" must be totally expunged from Afrikan-Trinbagonians' social lexicon, the term "Afro" must also be totally deleted. Negroland does not exist and never existed. Afroland does not exist and never existed.

Afrikans were brought involuntarily from Afrika to TnT; they did not come from Negroland or Afroland. There have never been a landmass or Continent called "Negro" or "Afro."

The fact of the matter is that the term Afro-American has been expunged from the societal fabric/lexicon of the United States since 1988. The descendents of the Afrikans who came to the United States as slaves in 1619 are now called Afrikan-Americans. That's their correct, historical designation. Now is the time for the descendents of the Afrikans who came to TnT to refer to themselves as Afrikan-Trinbagonians. That's our correct, historical designation.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), during the time of the Roman empire, the term Afrika became accepted as a replacement for the word "Libya" which meant "the land of the Lebu or Lubins in Genesis."

Geographically, Libya meant only the north coast of the Continent and at first, so did Afrika. By the end of the first century A.D., Afrika came to mean the entire Continent. The etymology (origin of the term Afrika) is not so precisely agreed upon and according to UNESCO, its origin is credited to one of six theories, as follows:

One: "The Afarak, also known as the "Aourigha", were a Berber people who lived south of Carthage. The terms "Afarak" or "Afrika" were used to denote the land of the "Afarak."

Two: Some people believe that the word comes from the Latin adjective "Aprica" which means "sunny" or the Greek "Aprike" which means "free from cold."

Three: The Phoenician root "Faraqua" which suggests " a separation" or in other words, "diaspora." This same root is found in some Afrikan languages, like Bambara.

Four: In Sanskrit and Hindu, the root "Apara" or "Afrika" denotes that which, in geographic terms, comes "after" the west. From the geographical position of India, "Afrika" is the western Continent.

Five: Another school of thought states that the word "Afrika" comes from two Phoenician terms, one of which means "an ear of corn", which was a symbol of fertility in that region and the other "Pharikia", which means "Land of the fruit."

Six: A historical tradition states that a Yeminter chief named "Africus" invaded north Afrika in the second millennium and founded a town called "Afrikyah." Others suggest that it is more likely that the Arabic term "Ifriqiya" is the Arabic translation of the word "Afrika."

However, in his Black Man of the Nile and His Family (1970), Dr. Josef A.A. ben-Jochannan documents that in 1,5000,000 B.C.E., this Continent was called "Alkebu-lan."

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

Dr. Kwame Nantambu is a part-time lecturer at Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies and University of the West Indies.

http://www.trinicenter.com/kwame/2007/0901.htm

[j-kid]

? As in, NEEEGRO PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Tropicana]

This topic humours you?

[Tropicana]

US Census said:

"Black, African-American, or Negro" NOT just Negro.

The word Negro is being dropped from the US Census.

[Tropicana]

[queenb]

A Jamaican man calls him out at the beginning of the video:

James Baldwin. A renown Amerikkkan bat*yman, who left this country and was widely accepted in Europe for his talent, and not despised for his homosexuality or race. Even back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I was in high school, some of his books were required reading.

[Tropicana]

Muta weighs in:

[jah_yout]

US Census said:

"Black, African-American, or Negro" NOT just Negro.

The word Negro is being dropped from the US Census.

they added "negro" to the census on purpose...they know the mind games they are playing...who told you the word is being dropped?

he said he has a feeling it may be discontinued after 2020

[jah_yout]

as far as if the word "negro" is offensive...well everything is based on context...and in certain contexts it is quite offensive...like being added to the census of an english-language document when the document already contains the word "black"--- and "negro" simply means the color black in spanish;

but the history of the use of the word "negro" as a racial designation in non-spanish speaking countries is one of racism

[Tropicana]

Many sources. I hope this one will do:

Census Bureau will drop the word "Negro" from its forms

After more than a century, the Census Bureau is dropping its use of the word "Negro" to describe black Americans in surveys.Instead of the term that came into use during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, census forms will use the more modern labels "black" or "African-American".
The change will take effect next year when the Census Bureau distributes its annual American Community Survey to more than 3.5 million U.S. households, Nicholas Jones, chief of the bureau's racial statistics branch, said in an interview.
He pointed to months of public feedback and census research that concluded few black Americans still identify with being Negro and many view the term as "offensive and outdated."
"This is a reflection of changing times, changing vocabularies and changing understandings of what race means in this country," said Matthew Snipp, a sociology professor at Stanford University, who writes frequently on race and ethnicity. "For younger African-Americans, the term`Negro' harkens back to the era when African-Americans were second-class citizens in this country."
First used in the census in 1900, "Negro" became the most common way of referring to black Americans through most of the early 20th century, during a time of racial inequality and segregation. "Negro" itself had taken the place of "colored." Starting with the 1960s civil rights movement, black activists began to reject the "Negro" label and came to identify themselves as black or African-American.
Still, the term has lingered, having been used by Martin Luther King Jr. in his speeches. It also remains in the names of some black empowerment groups that were established before the 1960s, such as the United Negro College Fund, now often referred to as UNCF.

For the 2010 census, the government briefly considered dropping the word "Negro" but ultimately decided against it, determining that a small segment, mostly older blacks living in the South, still identified with the term. But once census forms were mailed and some black groups protested, Robert Groves, the Census Bureau's director at the time, apologized and predicted the term would be dropped in future censuses.
When asked to mark their race, Americans are currently given a choice of five government-defined categories in census surveys, including one checkbox selection which is described as "black, African Am., or Negro." Beginning with the surveys next year, that selection will simply say "black" or "African American."
In the 2000 census, about 50,000 people specifically wrote in the word Negro when asked how they wished to be identified. By 2010, unpublished census data provided to the AP show that number had declined to roughly 36,000.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57571174/census-bureau-will-drop-the-word-negro-from-its-forms/