I have, somewhere in my stored books, a nineteenth century British Officers Training Manual, in which both Scottish and Indian regiments are referred to as Black troops. There is a whole section regarding the leading of these troops, seperate from the rest of the manual.

It is interesting to read some of the history behind these colour designations.

I have noticed, in the past few years, that locally anyway, the newspapers and television news have stopped constantly referring to people by their colour, unless it is entirely relevant to the story. For example, in the case of the shark attack mentioned above, why was the colour of the people involved relevant? It wasn't. What appears to be relevant is that they may have been reckless young men, 'reckless', 'young', and 'men' being the desciptors relevant to the story.

Years ago, before the end of apartheid, I was at a party where one guest was a young South African man. There were several Black (generally preferred designation in NS) Nova Scotians there as well as many White Nova Scotians. For the most part, Black Nova Scotians are of very mixed ancestry. A group of guests, including a Black couple, were talking to the South African about colour, the thing being, this young fellow supported Apartheid, and he vigorously claimed to be White, and at one point even showed his identification papers that said so. But to the Nova Scotians at the party, he appeared physically to be an obviously racially mixed person who, in Nova Scotia, would definitely self identify as Black. He claimed he could not see this at all, yet when asked, identified everyone in the room he thought was non-white, including one person whose appearance was much more ambiguous than his own.