| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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6. Names and Labels: Social, Racial, and Ethnic Terms
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| § 20. colored |
| Colored, or coloured, is recorded in its racial sense as early as 1611, but it did not become widespread in American English until after the Civil War, when the newly freed black population began to embrace it as a respectful alternative to black or negro. Well into the 20th century colored remained a self-chosen term of pride, as evidenced by its use in the name of the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) founded in 1909 and continuing under that name even today. By mid-century, however, the term colored had been largely supplanted among black Americans, first by the recently capitalized Negro and later by black and African American. As colored lost favor in the black population, its use by outsiders became more clearly offensive. | 1 |
| In the United States, colored has usually been spelled lowercase and has been virtually synonymous with black or Negro as those terms are used in American society, that is, with reference to any person of African ancestry regardless of mixture with European or other non-African peoples. In South Africa it is written uppercase—Coloured—and has long been applied specifically to persons of mixed-race parentage as opposed to racially unmixed blacks, whites, and Asians. | 2 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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