Importen från amerikans forskning och populärkultur är stor. Amerikanska begrepp får en lätt annorlunda mening i en europeisk och svensk kontext. I Sverige definieras rätt och fel ordval, språkvalet skiljer människor från varandra och från en realistisk syn på samhället och på varandra. Från wikipedia kan följande hämtas om korrekt benämning på en kategori människor, Jag drar inga slutsatser annat än att ordvalet kan avspegla en viss lokalfärg, en viss association och en viss kontext och den skiljer sig markant från olika inblandade.
The word “Negro” is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance. The word negro denotes ‘black’ in the Spanish and Portuguese, derived from the ancient Latin word, niger, ‘black’, which itself ultimately is probably from a Proto-Indo-European root *nekw-, ‘to be dark’, akin to *nokw- ‘night’.[1][2]
”Negro” superseded ”colored” as the most polite terminology, at a time when ”black” was more offensive.[3] This usage was accepted as normal, even by people classified as Negroes, until the later Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s. One well-known example is the identification by Martin Luther King, Jr. of his own race as ‘Negro’ in his famous 1963 speech I Have a Dream.
During the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some black American leaders in the United States, notably Malcolm X, objected to the word ”Negro” because they associated the word Negro with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second class citizens, or worse.[4] (Malcolm X preferred ”Black” to ”Negro”, but also started using the term ”Afro-American” after leaving the Nation of Islam.)[5]
Since the late 1960s, various other terms have been more widespread in popular usage. These include ”black”, ”Black African”, ”Afro-American” (in use from the late 1960s to 1990) and ”African American” (used in the United States to refer to black Americans, peoples often referred to in the past as American Negroes).[6]
The term ”Negro” is still used in some historical contexts, such as in the name of the United Negro College Fund[7][8] and the Negro league in sports.
The United States Census Bureau announced that ”Negro” would be included on the 2010 United States Census, alongside ”Black” and ”African-American” because some older black Americans still self-identify with the term