The Black History Museum

Who gets to be called “black”? And some other names for “the Black”
How these things change: a very personal view by Richard D North, this site’s editor

Some time in the last thirty years, “black” became synonymous with African, or of African origin. Even in the US, where the term African-American is the dominant usage , and especially the dominant polite and political usage, that’s what “black” means. It is the category the government census asks people to tick if they are not “white”, Hispanic, Asian, and so on. [http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/race/racefactcb.html]

The “N” word
“Nigger” has never been a polite word for blacks, but it got increasingly rude in the last fifty years. “Negro”, on which it is based, has always had the flavour of a technical word for people of African descent, to be set against calling all whites from northern Europe, “Caucasian”. Even “negro” has now been condemned as a historical usage. (Actually, in the 19th century the word used to be used for Asians, too.)

Even in the Thirties, Hendrik Van Loon, a polite and liberal author, could use “nigger” as a word capturing the ordinary non-polite and even dismissive way of talking about blacks. He could do so without condoning its usage, but without seeming to condemn it either. People accepted that the word was commonly used and not only by monsters.

If the 1950s and 1960s, it was accepted that white British people would use the word “coloured” or “coloureds” to describe blacks, a term which then included Asians. They would do so, for instance, in notes in their front windows if they wanted to get it across that, along with the Irish, or people with dogs or children, they wouldn’t be letting their rooms to them. Journalists would be told what people thought about “the coloureds” coming in from Jamaica and other West Indian countries, and from Africa and anywhere else.

Long before mass immigration to the UK, white people followed US usage. Black people of African descent were called “coons” and “darkies”. These were not necessarily dismissive or negative words, though they could be. But it is worth remembering that they could be familiar, friendly and affectionate, at least in intention.

What is much more difficult to assess is how well blacks took to being called coons or darkies. Many blacks were complicit in using the words, or accepting their use. But then, many blacks worked hard at being friendly with whites and accepting white usage, and sometimes at great cost.

Things get even more complicated when we come to black or white usage of dismissive words. In the 1970s it became trendy for white youngsters to call blacks “spades”, though many of the people who did so hardly ever met a “spade” and would have been very cautious in using the word when they did.

In the 1990s, the use by blacks of the word “nigger” (or “Nigga” – to capture its full flavour) became current in the black rap music which was sweeping the world. In this context “nigger” was ironic, absurd and edgy, and used – according to circumstance – to denote admiration or dismissal. So things had gone full circle. Woe betide a white person who adopted this usage at the wrong moment.