SharonA, I appreciate your comments about racial referents. Rather than repeat what I've previously written in this forum, here's a hyperlink to a recent thread that I started on the subject of Black racial referents in the USA":

thread.cfm?threadid=111488#2349412
Racial Referents-Negro, Quadroon, etc


That hyperlink takes you to a post that I wrote on how "African American" became the formal referent for Black Americans.