Colored
Sign in to savethumb|upright=1.5|Photograph by Russell Lee (photographer)|Russell Lee showing historical use of the term in the US in contrast with "white". Besides the big signs, the water cooler itself is labelled with a sign reading "colored". Colored (or coloured) is a racial descriptor historically used in the United States during the Jim Crow era to refer to an African American. In many places, it may be considered a slur.
Article
7 sectionsContents
- Dictionary definitions
- United States
- Census terms in the United States
- Term in NAACP
- See also
- References
- External links
thumb|upright=1.5|Photograph by Russell Lee (photographer)|Russell Lee showing historical use of the term in the US in contrast with "white". Besides the big signs, the water cooler itself is labelled with a sign reading "colored". Colored (or coloured) is a racial descriptor historically used in the United States during the Jim Crow era to refer to an African American. In many places, it may be considered a slur.
==Dictionary definitions== The word colored was first used in the 14th century but with a meaning other than race or ethnicity. The earliest uses of the term to denote a member of dark-skinned groups of peoples occurred in the second part of the 18th century in reference to South America. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "colored" was first used in this context in 1758 to translate the Spanish term () in Antonio de Ulloa's A voyage to South America.