# Why United Negro College Fund? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 23, 2006, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873 "2006-05-23T06:09:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/61 "2006-05-25T14:08:18Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > (For that matter, it would be interesting if anyone could find a copy of the actual Random House Unabridged Dictionary (which is substantially more rare than either the Merriam-Webster Unabridged or the American Heritage Unabridged) to see whether the notation of “1950s” actually appears in that work or whether it was a typo that occurred while transcribing the entry into the web site. If Random House does say “1950s,” it would be an unfortunate error, but if it says “1960s” it is the victim of a later transcription error.) It does say 1950s. I checked my copy. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/62 "2006-05-26T01:28:31Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > It does say 1950s. I checked my copy. Doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, if you think about it. It was probably compiled by a foreigner, proofread - if at all - by someone who hated America, and had for its commissioning editor someone who was involved in the McCarthy witch hunts. I’d go with the bloke from Ohio who was alive at the time. Which actually suggests the main problem, very probably the clincher: the entire dictionary may have been the work of zombies, left kicking their heels - what was left of them - after _The Brain Eaters_ launched Leonard Nimoy on an unsuspecting world. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/63 "2006-05-26T02:21:06Z")
A simple “I was wrong. Thanks for the correction” would suffice. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/64 "2006-05-26T02:26:18Z")
Y’know Roger, if it bothers you so much that there are people on this board who not only know what they are talking about, but that they can provide a logical narrative to support their positions and even provide evidence of what they have put forth, perhaps, instead of taking cheap shots and making snide remarks to display your petulance, you might consider simply sticking to **MPSIMS**. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/65 "2006-05-26T03:15:33Z")
The linguist over at the American Dialect Society posted replies to my query. [http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0605D&L=ADS-L&P=R3878&I=-3](http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0605D&L=ADS-L&P=R3878&I=-3) I think you can follow the responses by clicking on the “\> lightbulb” in the upper toolbar. I think. I can do it, but I don’t know if you can. To summarize their comments: The term “Black” was essentially not a player in the late 1950’s. Did it "start to replace _Negro_ in the late 1950’s–if you mean did it get used once for every 1000 times the word _Negro_ got used? Probably. Did it get used once for every ten times _Negro_ was used–almost certainly not. The term _Afro-American_ almost certainly replaced _Negro_ well before _Black_ did. From a 1968 N.Y.Times article: > [@](#): > > A recent readership poll by Jet magazine, a Negro weekly magazine, indicated that most preferred to be known as Afro-Americans. Black, Negro, African-American and colored as racial designations followed in that order. > Afro-American and black were the preferences of 59 per cent of the magazine’s readers. > The New York Amsterdam News, a weekly newspaper, dropped the word Negro early last year in favor of the term Afro-American. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/66 "2006-05-26T04:05:57Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > Doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, if you think about it. It was probably compiled by a foreigner, proofread - if at all - by someone who hated America, and had for its commissioning editor someone who was involved in the McCarthy witch hunts. I’d go with the bloke from Ohio who was alive at the time. > > Which actually suggests the main problem, very probably the clincher: the entire dictionary may have been the work of zombies, left kicking their heels - what was left of them - after _The Brain Eaters_ launched Leonard Nimoy on an unsuspecting world. Or perhaps it doesn’t say what you’re trying to pretend it says (as I pointed out earlier), and perhaps numerous cites have already been offered up by **tomndebb** that demonstrate the falsehood of your claims. Seriously, you were wrong. Get over it. You don’t _have_ to turn this into a big embarrassment that will permanently damage people’s opinions of you. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/67 "2006-05-26T04:18:20Z")
**Sam** , a lot of “mights and probablies” in the linguistlist responses, from people who, unlike some people on the SDMB, don’t seem to feel the need to be definitive. The way you phrased your question requesting information about the usage of “polite” people raises a whole host of issues. Spoken language is not necessarily – in fact, sociolinguistic studies would suggest, not usually - driven by the polite in society, however that might be defined or understood. And mention of sociolinguistics reminds us of the regional variety that is almost certain to exist in enquiries of this sort in a place as big and diverse as the USA. With regard to the fellow who wrote, “as late as 1967 a new encyclopedic reference book dealing with black history and culture was entitled The Negro Almanac and used the label Negro throughout”, I would merely say that such reference books take years to compile, and in the case of dictionaries and encyclopedias, in particular, it is well known that they reflect usage from years earlier. **Tom** , how about this: you start a thread in MPSIMS, and I’ll drop by and support it? ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/68 "2006-05-26T04:21:06Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > You don’t _have_ to turn this into a big embarrassment that will permanently damage people’s opinions of you. I think I’ve had occasion to mention this to you before, but I’ll say it again: don’t fall into the trap of trying to be popular, whether on an internet chat board or in real life, for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/69 "2006-05-26T04:23:43Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > You don’t _have_ to turn this into a big embarrassment that will permanently damage people’s opinions of you. You misjudge him. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/70 "2006-05-26T04:25:31Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > I think I’ve had occasion to mention this to you before, but I’ll say it again: don’t fall into the trap of trying to be popular, whether on an internet chat board or in real life, for that matter. I’m not surprised that you don’t care about being popular but I am _greatly_ surprised that you don’t care about being right. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/71 "2006-05-26T04:30:48Z")
**Exapno** has the book. Are you doubting his veracity? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/72 "2006-05-26T04:41:59Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > **Exapno** has the book. Are you doubting his veracity? Why should he doubt the poster? The _book_ contains a _single_ error. (It might actually contain a single erroneous _character_ if a “5” was typed instead of an intended “6.”) Despite your dodging and weaving, you have provided no information to support your contention beyond a single reference with a single (vague) date that is lacking in provenance and has no substantiation. At this point, it is pretty clear that _even you_ should be able to recognize that your citation is lacking as evidence. It is difficult to believe that you are actually serious on the topic. If you find any evidence (as opposed to a single vague claim in a general reference work), please present it. Otherwise, I am afraidf that I will be forced to conclude that any further remarks will have been posted merely to yank our chains. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/73 "2006-05-26T04:56:40Z")
Actually, **Tom** , it was primarily _you_ that I was addressing when I urged caution with regard to doubting **Exapno** ’s veracity. You are making a very strong assertion, viz. that a major publishing house has made a mistake in one of its reference books. It is up to you to show that they thus erred. What I suggest is that you contact them, point out what you consider is an undoubted error, and see how they respond. They might say, “Thanks, Tom, you’re right”. Alternatively, they might respond, “No, Tom, we are right - for the following reasons”. You see, if it isn’t a typo (and that’s unlikey, as I guess the work has been through various revisions, and such mistakes are usually identified and put right), then that means that they had reasons for writing it, which in turn means evidence. I like to think your mind is open enough to be willing to accept correction. But of course I have no access to your mental state, so only you can answer that question. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/74 "2006-05-26T05:05:36Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > **Exapno** has the book. Are you doubting his veracity? I’m saying the _book_ is wrong. What do you have to say about the cites I provided above that say 60’s instead of 50’s? How do you explain my own memories of the word still being in polite usage in the early 70’s (this was in Lousiana which always takes a while to catch up but it was still pretty far removed from the 50’s)? I was born in the mid 60’s. It’s physically impossible for me to remember the 50’s or the early 60’s (or even much of the late 60’s), so what am I remembering? ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/75 "2006-05-26T07:51:13Z")
From [_American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language_](http://www.bartleby.com/61/)’s usage note on the word [black](http://www.bartleby.com/61/22/B0292200.html): > [@](#): > > _The Oxford English Dictionary_ contains evidence of the use of _black_ with reference to African peoples as early as 1400, and certainly the word has been in wide use in racial and ethnic contexts ever since. **However, it was not until the late 1960s that _black_ (or _Black_) gained its present status as a self-chosen ethnonym with strong connotations of racial pride, replacing the then-current _Negro_ among Blacks and non-Blacks alike with remarkable speed.** Equally significant is the degree to which _Negro_ became discredited in the process, reflecting the profound changes taking place in the Black community during the tumultuous years of the civil rights and Black Power movements… ( **Emphasis** added.) So…_one of the dictionaries must be **wrong**!_ :eek: The horror… A reference book with a mistake in it! ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/76 "2006-05-26T10:35:12Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > What I suggest is that you contact them, point out what you consider is an undoubted error, and see how they respond. I had already sent them a message on the subject. If they respond to me with evidence to support their typo, I will post it here. Given the overwhelming evidence that I have already marshalled, (in contrast to your stubborn adherence to a single character in a single work) I am going to be quite surprised to discover that it was a deliberate insertion and not a typo. I am afraid that I find your faith in the infallibility of reference works touchingly naive–particularly for a usage entry that does not actually provide etymological support in the manner of a primary entry. (When I was a kid, our school dictionary defined “hillbilly” as a “Michigan farmer” for some odd reason, despite the very old origin and association of that word with people of the Appalachian and Ozark regions some 250 miles to the southeast and 500 miles to the southwest.) ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/77 "2006-05-26T11:46:06Z")
Roger, you might want to read some books by James Baldwin. He was a spokesman/observer of the times and his people. IIRC, his novel Tell me How Long The Train’s Been Gone has a passage where the expatriate actor gets chided for using the word “negro” instead of “black” in a bar in France. It’s a 400 page paperback so I am having trouble finding the reference if I’ve got the right book. Anyhoo, it was set in the 60’s and published in the 60’s. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/78 "2006-05-26T14:02:14Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > You are making a very strong assertion, viz. that a major publishing house has made a mistake in one of its reference books. Are you joking? Mistakes of such nature are not all that uncommon. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/79 "2006-05-26T15:04:24Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > **Sam** , a lot of “mights and probablies” in the linguistlist responses, from people who, unlike some people on the SDMB, don’t seem to feel the need to be definitive. And yet you felt certain enough - based upon one vague sentence in a dictionary - to serve up a l33t Critical Discourse Analysis of Dr. King’s speech. The trouble is that you seem to have assigned definitive weight to your flawed understanding of one sentence, while refusing to acknowledge the wealth of information that suggests that your interpretation of that sentence is entirely incorrect. This furthers my general belief that “Critical Discourse Analysis” is more suited to the somewhat vaguer world of literary criticism and rather an odd fit with the generally more scientifically rigorous world of linguistics. > [@](#): > > The way you phrased your question requesting information about the usage of “polite” people raises a whole host of issues. Spoken language is not necessarily – in fact, sociolinguistic studies would suggest, not usually - driven by the polite in society, however that might be defined or understood. Certainly not. But we were discussing the use of the term “Negro” in the name of an organization and in speeches by Martin Luther King, correct? So the prevailing “polite” usage would seem to be what you would hear in those circumstances. Few people enshrine terms of abuse in the names of organizations, after all. > [@](#): > > And mention of sociolinguistics reminds us of the regional variety that is almost certain to exist in enquiries of this sort in a place as big and diverse as the USA. How sad, then, that you haven’t found any evidence to support your argument in the teeming mass of linguistic variation that is the United States. > [@](#): > > **Tom** , how about this: you start a thread in MPSIMS, and I’ll drop by and support it? Is this an attempt to avoid having your arguments subject to the scrutiny they’ve been given here? > [@roger thornhill](#): > > I think I’ve had occasion to mention this to you before, but I’ll say it again: don’t fall into the trap of trying to be popular, whether on an internet chat board or in real life, for that matter. Where do you get the idea that I try to be popular? I was simply hoping - since factual correctness is obviously less of a motivator for you than for me - that you at least cared what people thought of you. Clearly neither one is liable to be persuasive to you. > [@roger thornhill](#): > > You are making a very strong assertion, viz. that a major publishing house has made a mistake in one of its reference books. ?! I’m amazed that someone with your academic credentials (even in the field you chose) would suggest that general reference works are rarely incorrect. Such things happen all the time; factual errors exist in all sorts of writing, and it seems to me that you should have figured that out during your education. But once again, “began to replace” does not suggest that by 1963 the term _had_ replaced the other. “Began to replace”, in fact, specifically suggests that the replacement took quite some time; the implication of your argument is that since one term “began to replace” another in the late '50s, and thus must have wholly replaced it by the early '60s - but you have found no evidence to support this contention, upon which your argument here rests, not even within the (possibly flawed) statement from Random House. > [@tomndebb](#): > > I am afraid that I find your faith in the infallibility of reference works touchingly naive Perhaps it would be so if he didn’t have a PhD in a subfield of linguistics (a subfield of linguistics at least according to whatever institution he attended.) I’m rather disturbed at the idea that someone who presumably has a good deal of experience in academia would be so trusting of a general reference like that. ---
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873/80 "2006-05-26T16:18:31Z")
If we can get back to the topic at hand… I think it’s interesting that the “negro colleges” have pretty much adopted a new group moniker and go by HBCU. Maybe it would be worthwhile to trace that name change. UNCF supports more than just HBCUs, of course, but the fact that the phraseology for HBCUs have changed makes the UNCF persistence all the more curious to me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-united-negro-college-fund/357873.md?page=5)