Why are black ppl called coloured; isn’t black an abscence of colour? Wouldn’t it be more correct to call white ppl colour since white possesses all colours?
Well, since ‘black people’ are no more black than ‘white people’ are white, it’s really a moot point isn’t it?
We’re not coloured, we were born this way.
The term wasn’t made by scientists; it was made by southern rednecks. This explains the scientific inaccuracies.
When dealing with light, yes. However, when you’re dealing with pigments (which would be the case here) then white is the absense of color.
Do you have a cite that supports your assertation that the term colored was invented solely by “southern rednecks”? If they were true southern rednecks they would not have deigned to use such an effete term as “colored” when other, stronger terms were readily available to their allegedly minor vocabulary.
The OED gives citations for the use of “colored” (or “coloured”) to applies to the physical attributes of blacks (i.e., people of sub-Saharan African ancestry) in British English as far back as the early 17th century. It appears that the term didn’t become common until its regular use in the early 19th century in the U.S. However, simultaneously, the term “colored” was coming to be used in South Africa, where it means “of mixed race.”
Isn’t there a poem about white people … something about going green with envy, blue with cold, red with anger etc so who are we calling coloured?
As a physicist and English speaker, I have to object to this. Black is a color. If you have a pair of black gloves, and someone asks you what color they are, what do you say? The color black is due to an absence of light, but just because there’s no such thing as a black photon doesn’t mean black isn’t a color. There’s no such things a white photon either.
Coloured (sic)? Great day in the morning! I haven’t heard that word actually used in conversation in at least a decade, and even then only by people born before 1930–and I’m in INDIANA!
“Colo{u}red” was an old American South euphemism for “of Negro/black/African American ancestry” and as such has gone the way of “limbs” as a euphemism for a woman’s legs.
However, there is a technical usage that is still current – the people of South Africa who do not belong to one of the Bantu tribes but who do have ancestry deriving from one of them are customarily referred to as the “Cape Coloured” – as distinct from black people, who belong to one of the Bantu tribes, Khoi-San, or ethnic white. With the change in government there and the effective elimination of Apartheid, it no longer has any legal meaning, but AFAIK it is still a term used, normally now without a pejorative sense, to describe South African persons of mixed ancestry.
Which reminds me of a joke (no offense to anyone here):
100 years ago when 100 white people chase a black man it was called KKK. What is it called today?
The PGA.