Who Is Colored?
One area of unclarity is what to call the noticeable and probable American descendents of Africans. In general, the general names of "colored" and "black" are as illogical and irrational as the racism fueling the economic, social and political discrimination against "those people" or "you people."
Quite simply, inasmuch as black is the absence of all color and white is the presence of all colors (white light going into a prism yields the rainbow of all colors) then the real colored people have always then the white people. Another perspective on this contradiction is the following anonymous ditty.
When I was born, I was black When I grew up, I was black When I go out in the sun, I am Black
But you! |
Quite simply, as noted elsewhere, better terms are chocolate and vanilla than the terms weighted with historical anger and hate, blacks and whites. In between are he caramel folk.
Quite simply, all humanity evolved out of Africans with dark skin. In the U.S., we are all African-Americans. Some came from Africa within the last few hundred years mostly via the Middle Passage. Others, the pale faces, came out thousands of years ago with a sidetrip into Europe. Whiteness evolved as homo sapiens moved away from the equator. As one wag said to me, a comment that will elicit hackles in some quarters, "So, whities are genetically washed-out darkies?"