“negro” and “Caucasian” vs “black” and “white”

[Homo Insapiens]

Why the hell is there double post when I only did it once? Doesn’t look like I can delete either. I’ll just continue editing the second one and ignore the first one then.

[Homo Insapiens]

People who have seen very dark south Asians, as well as very light East Asians, before, what are your opinions on this matter?

[Homo Insapiens]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRB9P40Wjak

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GQr8-f0OLXY

[Smitty]

I’m not trying to be obtuse. I’m trying to be logical. At the heart of this really isn’t about race or ethnicity or anything of that sort, it’s about logic and reason. I’m actually no expert on anthropology whatsoever. I’m just trying to shed light on something I’ve always found illogical as a lay person.

Africans can be very nearly black-colored. So can some South Asian caucasoids. Yet they aren’t called and known as “black people”, only people of African and Australasian descent are called and known as that, it has become synonymous with them.

People of African descent came to be called “black” in Spanish and Portuguese, which is “negro”, in which they still are, but in English and some other European languages, they came to be called something distinct, “negroes” and it’s equivalent in other European languages, though never in Spanish and Portuguese curiously, from which the term is derived from their term for the color black, despite the fact that the negroes would’ve been very dark back then to them, and there wouldn’t have been knowledge of south Asian black Caucasoids, the colonists were still sensible enough to not name a noun after an adjective. English “negro” and it’s equivalents in some other European languages are distinct from Spanish and Portuguese “negro”, which just means the color black for them, but in English and some other European languages, it does not refer to any color, it came to distinctly not mean a color but to mean a distinct race, those possessing negroid features.

Some Africans, like some South Sudanese Nilotics, are apparently literally black, something I’m not sure yet whether is possible among South Asians, but most Africans aren’t very nearly black-colored, at least to my observations of them in photos, videos and in person, and many are very light shades of brown, yet are still called and known as “black people”. Unmixed people of African descent tend to be on average darker than people of South Asian descent, but there is a lot of overlap both ways.

It’s like if there were Smurfs and Na’vi, only one of those groups got to be called “blue”, “blue people”, and their original name became taboo and politically incorrect, but the other doesn’t get to be called “blue people”, so when people say “blue people” and “blue person” it excludes the other group, despite the fact that they can be very blue.

About the term “negro”, if it’s so offensive to some people, look, if there was another term used to exclusively refer to people of African and Australasian descent, that is, people who have dark skins and curly hair, I would be happy to latch on to it instead of “negro”, but alas, there isn’t, and doesn’t look like there’ll ever be anytime soon, which is why I must resort to “negro”

The advantage the term “negro” had is that it only referred to people of African and Australasian descent, when South Asians can be very dark as well, and didn’t refer to color, when many “black people” can be very light.

I’m not actually entirely sure why the term “negro” has become so taboo and offensive in modern times. There doesn’t appear to be any clear reason why. The only thing I can see is that it’s somehow associated with America’s history of racism, but that doesn’t say very much. To me, to be offended by this term is a clear example of mindless automatic brainwashing.
Before the term became outdated, it was always used as a neutral non-pejorative term, just as terms for other ethnicities are. “Negro” was by no means a pejorative term, and by no means intended to look down on them.
Whoever were responsible for getting rid of “negro” and replacing it with “black”, clearly they didn’t have south asians in mind. After all, people of South Asian descent had very little to do with America’s and the West’s history, in contrast to people of African descent, and most of the world follows the west.

Btw in my native language it’s still perfectly acceptable to say “negro”, and in fact my native language doesn’t have adjective term for races like how English does.

Apparently, people of European descent were called “white people” throughout the duration that people of African descent were called “negroes”, rather illogical and disappointing to me.

About Sean’s comments, I’m certainly no troll. I’m not trying to argue for anything like “Indians are niggers”. Because the darkest Indians are rarely found overseas, and for some reason there’s barely any photos of them online, and the fact that they don’t seem to be common nowadays, I’m trying to illustrate how dark they can be, in order to be able to argue how illogical it is that only negroes are called “black”.

About Sean’s point on me making 50 threads about this topic, I may have made many other posts relating to colored people, for they often are in my interests, but only this thread, along with maybe like one or two others, are about this very topic, that is, “negro vs black and Caucasian vs white” if that makes sense. I made threads inquiring about Indian skin colour in order to conduct research on this topic, because I’m not familiar with south Asians, I’m trying to see if South Asians can corroborate whether Indians can be very nearly black, or if it’s just my observational errors.

If these facts can be established, then I can’t see why anyone would disagree that it’s rather illogical to call only negroes “black people” when: 1. They’re not usually literally black 2. They’re often very light 3. South Asian Caucasoids can be as dark as very nearly black.

So why are only negroes called “black people”?
Eurocentrism/Westerncentrism?

1. I already responded to. The fact that they are not literally black is as irrelevant as the fact that Europeans are not literally white. It is the striking contrast between the two races that led to, perhaps, exaggerated descriptors for them.

2. The ones Europeans dealt with first (West Africans) are among the darkest. Somalis and some other groups may be lighter, but they were not the ones Europeans interacted with first.

3. South Asians (who are not Caucasoids but a mix of Caucasoid and Australoid) can be nearly black. But the term had come into use with sole reference to Africans. I don't know which race Europeans came into contact with first, but Indians have been known as Indians probably since the time of Alexander the Great. Europeans have traded with them, indirectly at least, for a long time. You seem to have the idea that "black" as a term is a recent creation. It is not. George Washington used the term, for example (https://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/henriqu...615/gwslav.htm). It is synonymous with "negro" (which has literally the same meaning in Spanish, as you acknowledge). Is it Eurocentrism that Englishmen didn't bother to think of Indians when forming their own language? Possibly, and that is wholly appropriate. Europeans should be Eurocentric, for that is how the world works. I sense you have an agenda, and it may be this very Eurocentrism that is your target.

[Homo Insapiens]

………

[Homo Insapiens]

1. I already responded to. The fact that they are not literally black is as irrelevant as the fact that Europeans are not literally white. It is the striking contrast between the two races that led to, perhaps, exaggerated descriptors for them.

2. The ones Europeans dealt with first (West Africans) are among the darkest. Somalis and some other groups may be lighter, but they were not the ones Europeans interacted with first.

3. South Asians (who are not Caucasoids but a mix of Caucasoid and Australoid) can be nearly black. But the term had come into use with sole reference to Africans. I don't know which race Europeans came into contact with first, but Indians have been known as Indians probably since the time of Alexander the Great. Europeans have traded with them, indirectly at least, for a long time. You seem to have the idea that "black" as a term is a recent creation. It is not. George Washington used the term, for example (https://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/henriqu...615/gwslav.htm). It is synonymous with "negro" (which has literally the same meaning in Spanish, as you acknowledge). Is it Eurocentrism that Englishmen didn't bother to think of Indians when forming their own language? Possibly, and that is wholly appropriate. Europeans should be Eurocentric, for that is how the world works. I sense you have an agenda, and it may be this very Eurocentrism that is your target.

Yes you explain well why people of European, African and Australasian descent came to be called “white” and “black”, and it’s logical that they should come to be in binary race societies like colonial America and Australia where only one race is light and the other is dark. Since those terms are universally established now, the issue here is by doing that they exclude the other “white” and “black” people of the world, East and South Asians, it’s clearly because the West wasn’t thinking of Asians when they were forming their languages, they were only looking at their own societies, which is quite logical and not entirely blameable considering how much less globalised the world was, the difficulty of travel and the lack of photography back then.
Now the world is much more globalised and connected, but these old Eurocentric labels are still what the world follows.
I’ve always thought of people who use the term “white” and “black”, “did it ever occur to you that maybe negroes and caucasians aren’t the only white and black peoples in the world?”

I forgot to mention about your point on how “in the halcyon days of pre-globalism, two colors was enough. The English language didn't need a million different words to appease all the different shades of brown that exist in the world.”
Maybe, but the English language did have a bunch of terms for people of such descent, there was “negro”, “black”, “colored”, “mulatto”, “quadroon”, “octoroon”, “high yellow”, “yellow”, “zambo”, etc. all those terms are considered outdated or even offensive now, having been replaced with the term “black” and “biracial”. I’ll let you search up what those terms mean, there’s not enough space for me to explain here.

My native language doesn’t call races by colors, and I personally wouldn’t either, I think it’s highly exaggerated, but that’s just me.

In Malaysia, the Chinese might as well be called “white” and the Indians “black”, but they aren’t.
Actually, some old texts of colonial Singapore I’ve read describe Indians as “black”
One American, Charles Hendley, wrote about his visit to Singapore in 1922 that mentioned regarding the people “What surprised me most was the extreme black skins of some of the East Indians. They are as black as any of our negroes and what startles one is to hear them (a few about the hotels) speak in clear excellent English. Many of them have fine clear cut features.”
One American U.S. Navy Lieutenant, A. W. Habersham, wrote about his visit to singapore in 1854 that mentioned “While Stevens and myself were stepping into a sampan to go on shore, a light row-boat pulled alongside, in the centre of which stood a very black Hindoo with a very white turban around his head.” Clearly referring to an Indian.
One confederate U.S. officer, Raphael Semmes, wrote about his visit to Singapore in 1863 that mentioned “The finest dressed part of the population was decidedly the jet blacks, with their white flowing mantles and spotless turbans.” clearly referring to the Indians.
Indians in Singapore are now relatively light skinned because most of them are or descended from recent Indian immigrants. These texts suggest that they may have been darker skinned back then.
Curiously, I’ve never seen any reference to the Chinese as “white”. Maybe I just haven’t seen one yet.
I’ve not gotten to read colonial texts in South Asia that referred to the Indians as “black” yet.
I just thought this paragraph would be of interest and relevance to this topic.

Most West and East Africans, along with Tamils, share the same range of skin tones, shades of brown. It’s certain African groups in Savannahs scattered across the continent that are the darkest. How West and East Africans differ seems to be in their facial features, in which West Africans tend to have more pronounced negroid features. Indeed it’s West Africans and their descendants in which people of European descent and the Western world have had the most contact and are most familiar with.

I’m no expert, but I’m not sure how certain we can be that South Asians are a mix of Caucasoids and Australoids, but that wouldn’t surprise me, but I think some people don’t believe that. The darkest Indians I’ve seen looked like they could be European if they had light skin. Maybe that’s how australoid-caucasoid mulattoes look like? Yet South Asians are definitely Caucasoid, even if just partly.

That’s a good question about whether Europeans encountered Africans or Indians first. I would suspect Africans, they’re much more closer and accessible to Europeans than South Asians are for them, rather ironic I think because South Asians are more related to Europeans than Africans are, culturally and genetically. Europeans just have to follow the coasts and Nile southwards, and people seemed to have always found ways to cross the Sahara. Europeans rarely seem to have ventured far into the interior of Africa until like a century or two ago, because of uncertainty and the dangers and diseases, but people have always lived on coasts, and there’s plenty there already.
Sub-Saharan Africans have always been isolated from the rest of the world ever since at least the Sahara dried up. That’s largely why negroids have remained a distinct race.
Alexander the Great and his army made it all the way to North India, but the darkest Indians are from the far south of India, Alexander and his army only made it to the north, so I don’t think they would have seen the darkest Indians. Btw it’s possible that Alexander the Great may have never actually existed. Europeans and their descendants certainly seem to have been much more familiar with Africans and their descendants historically than they were with South Asians. Africa is much more nearer and accessible to Europeans than India is for them. European contact with Africans goes all the way back to ancient times. Obvious negro figures appear in Ancient Greek art, and negroes were occasionally depicted and mentioned throughout the Roman Empire and medieval Europe. I recall that some ancient skeletons unearthed in Britain were determined to be of African origin. You can read about that stuff online. I believe negroes in Ancient Greece and Rome would have mostly been from the Nile region, for ancient Greeks and Romans didn’t travel down the west African coast or cross the Sahara.
More importantly, Africans would become much more familiar and vital to Europeans during its age of discovery and colonialism over the past half millennium.
In contrast, Europeans had much less contact with South Asians than they did with Negroes. Most European contact with South Asians would have probably been through trade until they began colonising them, but that didn’t involve huge numbers of Europeans moving there and huge numbers of people of European and Indian descent living together, in contrast to how huge numbers of people of European, African and Australasian descent ended up living together, and the countries where that happened is evidently where and why the terms “white” and “black” people originate from, and during all that time the vast majority of Westerners remained unaware of how Asia and it’s people were like until modern times, I think like just a few generations ago. The darkest of Indians are found in the far south of the subcontinent and are rarely found overseas, and they seem to be minorities, maybe uncommon too. I’m not actually sure how natural or normal black skin is for Indians, and what it takes for them to be, I haven’t seen them like that in a long time, but it certainly exists, and if not common now, must have been more common in the past.

No I’ve always been aware that “black” was always a common term to refer to people of African and Australasian descent since the earliest days of their contact with Europeans. I believe the Ancient Greeks called Africans “Aithiops” meaning “burnt face” and described Indians as “Aithiops with straight hair”, and “blackamoor” was an early English term for Africans in the 16th century. However, by the mid 16th century, the term “negro” was becoming the most common term for people of African descent. “Black” was a common term, but that was a secondary term, the primary and most common term for them was “negro”, which was so for centuries, and only started fading out after the civil rights movement. As mentioned, it was never a pejorative term. English’s “Negro” and it’s equivalents in other European languages originated in but is not literally the same as Spanish’s and Portuguese’s “negro”, which for them just means the color black (which was subsequently used as a term and label for negroes, like in today’s English “black”), but “negro” in English and it’s equivalents in other European languages does not mean any color, it specifically means a race, that of people with negroid features, notably people of African and Australasian descent, regardless of color. You could say “white negro”, that would probably be either a very light negro or an albino.
people never used “negro” as adjectives, people never said “negro dog, bird, river, jacket, etc.” that would be like using the term “Caucasian” to describe those things, rather illogical.

It looks like supporters of using the term “black” want to make it look like race is only about skin color, even though it’s clearly not, it’s one of the last things that crosses my mind when thinking about race, and even then they’re clearly not thinking about South Asians.

I find it ironic that people have been much more mindful of the controversy of calling Native Americans “Indians”, but when it comes to naming dark skinned people, that wasn’t given much thought, and its like they think that there’s only one one group of black people in the world, negroes, where there’s actually two, negroes and South Asians.

South Asians aren’t known as “black”, but do you know whether they’re known as “colored”?

You say that Eurocentrism is ok? Please elaborate. I don’t think most people would agree. Understanding how it works is one thing, supporting it is another.

I don’t have any agenda. What do you mean by that? Do I look like I do? If I seem like it, I really don’t. Like I said I’m trying to explore something I’ve always found to be illogical and annoying. What do you mean when you say that you suspect that “this very Eurocentrism is my target”? I can’t say that I’d be supporting of it for one thing, unless you think I should, then I’m always willing to listen.

I hope I don’t come across as looking racist in any way. I have complete respect for all people deserving it, regardless of how they look or their background, for I think they are irrelevant to whether people deserve respect. In fact, I’d trade my light skin for dark skin any day, because I think it looks so much more cooler and beautiful, but alas, that’s not possible, because it’s all genetic.

I’m not sure whether you would call this an agenda, I wouldn’t, but nevertheless I have a wish that either:
1. The terms “negro” and “Caucasian” gets widely used again, in order to distinguish them from other light and dark skinned people who are not that.
2. If “negro” is considered too inappropriate (even though I can see no reason why it should be), then another term like it that specifically refers to those people gets introduced, in order to distinguish them from other dark skinned people who are not negro, like south Asians.
3. If the exaggerated terms “white” and “black” are to be widely used, then at least don’t limit them to people of European, African and Australasian descent, but include anyone that has light and dark skin.

Hope that makes sense.

Those seem like logical solutions to me, but none of those things are ever likely to happen soon sadly.

If you grew up around very nearly black Indians, would you then not wonder and question why only negroes are called “black people”? Seems inevitable to wonder for me, but others might disagree.

Kind regards.

[Homo Insapiens]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit...at_Singh_Thind

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozawa_v._United_States

[Mortimer]

In Slovakia and other slavic speaking regions gypsies are known as blacks I don't mind how people lable each other as long it's in a respectful way

[Homo Insapiens]

https://amp.inkstonenews.com/opinion...rticle/3000772

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/engl...al/753623.html

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7t16j

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people

[Homo Insapiens]

Is there any equivalent to the term “negro” in Spanish and Portuguese which means the same thing that it does in English and other European languages, that is, not the color black or dark color, but the negroid & australoid races specifically?

I see that Spanish and Portuguese have terms for “Caucasian”, which is “Caucasico” in Spanish, and “Caucasiano” in Portuguese, so it’d be a shame if there isn’t an equivalent for “negro” for them.

I see that Spanish and Portuguese have equivalents for the term “negroid”, which is “negroide” for them. I’m wondering if that’s the same as “negro”.