"Please if you wish to bring this subject up again, and I'm sure you will, can you please start a thread about it, or post it in an appropriate thread".

This comment was made in thread.cfm?threadid=100632&messages=69 BS: Where has all the hostility gone ? in response to my post about the possible negative connotations of the word 'black' when used in everyday language.

Rather than start a new thread, I decided to refresh this thread.

Why? Because I would like to continue this discussion.

Why? Because I think it is an important area of consideration for a folk/blues forum and for people living in a multi-racial world and trying to understand each other.

In the hostility thread I commented about the negative connotations in society of the color black. Here's an excerpt of that comment:

..."I'm not interested in starting an argument, but I need to share an opinion that I believe is held by a number of Black people- the use of 'black' as a referent for something bad, or evil has a cumulative, negative hurtful psycho-social effect on black and brown skinned people and also perhaps more indirectly on people who do not have black and brown skin"...
-snip-

The entire comment can be found here.

My conclusions might be right or they might be wrong. But rather than focus on whether my comments were correct, I'd like to focus on the responses on that thread that I received to those comments. In reading the responses to my comment, I believe that folks thought that I was speaking against the use of "Black" as a racial group referent. That was definitely not my intention.

As I am so used to capitalizing 'Black' when using it as a racial referent, I did not think that my comments about the color black would be interpreted [or misinterpreted] that way.

I should have realized that there are many people here and elsewhere-both non-Black and Black- who do not capitalize the word Black when it is used as a racial referent.

Be that as it may, I want to clarify that I consider Black to be an appropriate informal reference for African Americans {meaning those people who are formerly known as "Negro", "Colored people", and
"Afro-Americans"}. "Black Americans" is also an appropriate reference for African Americans.

Note that the referent "African American" is almost always capitalized-especially by African Americans. However, there are differences of opinions among African Americans-and others-as to whether the group referent 'Black' should be capitalized. [For consistency's sake, I also capitalize "White" when it is used as a group referent. Most people don't].

Basically, I've found that people who belong to the two schools of thought on whether Black should be capitalized, don't read anything negative into the fact that some people capitalize the first letter of the word Black and some people don't. However, the subject of whether "Negro" or "African American should be capitalized is a whole different story.

In the 1950s, there were strenuous campaigns mounted by Black Americans to get the print media to routinely capitalize "Negro" as they routinely capitalized other ethnic referents {such as Irish, English, Italian, German, and Russian}. Eventually, these campaigns were successful. Nowadays, the group referent "Negro" has been retired and replaced by "African American" {the formal referent} and by "Black" {the informal referent}. However, from time to time, Black people {and others}may use "negro" with a lower case first letter or with a capital first letter. In doing so, that writer is conveying his or her opinion that the person described as a negro or Negro acts or speaks in a subservient "Uncle Tom" or "Aunt Jemima" manner. In other words, almost always nowadays when an African American uses "Negro" or "negro" to refer to another Black person, that person is being insulted.   

I should also clarify that in my opinion and I believe in the opinion of most African Americans, an African American does not have to have any ancestors who were enslaved.

[And/But] "Black" is a larger group referent then "African American".
The way that I {and I believe many African Americans] use "Black", this group referent refers to all those people in Africa and in the African Diaspora who have [dare I say] "Negroid" ancestry regardless of these people's skin complexion. "Black" also refers to people from Australia who are called Aborigines {my apology if that is not the correct referent} and people who are from nations such as Fiji who have naturally dark skin.