In my next post , I'll provide some excerpts from several reviews of Talley's Negro Folk Rhymes. But first I'd like to comment about the use of the group referent "Negro".

"Negro" is a long retired referent for Black Americans. Since at least the early 1980s, the preferred formal group and individual referent for Americans with some Black African descent is "African American". Note that this referent is always spelled with two capital "As".

Also since the 1980s, "Black" is usually considered to be an acceptable informal referent for African Americans. Note that when "Black" is used as a group or individual referent, it's usually considered acceptable to write that word with a capital "b" or a lower case "b".

It should be further noted that for African Americans, "Black" refers to people from continental Africa (and its contiguous islands) and people of African descent (also known as the Black Diaspora). Thus, "Black" refers to a larger group of people than does "African Americans". (All African Americans are Black, but all Black people aren't African Americans).

Since 2000, the even larger group referent "People of Color" (PoC) has gained in popularity. "People of Color" refers to all people in the world who are non-White. PoC isn't the same as "Colored People", a referent that was used in the mid 20th century and earlier for Black Americans and which is still retained in the name of the civil rights organization the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). "People of Color" is also not the same as the Coloureds of South Africa. And yes, I know that this may be confusing.

To further complicate matters, the referent "Negro" is usually never used by African Americans nowadays unless it's used as an insult. In those instances "Negro" will be written with a small "n" to further emphasize that the person so identified is acting as a person who is an Uncle Tom. This small letter "n" is written that way on purpose as it imitates what used to be the practice of most of this country's mainstream media. Unlike other racial, ethnic, and national names whose first letters were routinely capitalized [ English, Chinese, sSpanish, Jewish, Indians, Japanese, Irish etc], the "n" in "Negro" was routinely written with a lower case letter. The messsge inherent in that practice was that we (Black people) were thought to be less than all other peoples of the world. Ironically, shortly after the long fought movement to get the "n" in "Negro" written with a capital letter was successful, the group referent "Negro" lost support among African Americans. The debate about which group referent we preferred was intense for a period of time. However,for about 30 years, "African American" has been generally accepted as the "correct" formal referent and "Black" has generally been accepted as our informal referent. But "Black" is supposed to be used as an adjective (such as "Black people") and not as a noun ("The Blacks"). While there are still some Black Americans who, for various reasons, don't like the referent "African American" or don't like the referent "Black" or don't like either referent, most of us use these two terms interchangably in semi-formal conversation such as that found on this forum.

Hopefully, this comment has helped to clarify this subject. I decided to write about this subject on this thread since the thread's title might lead some people to think that it's socially correct to still use the referent "Negro".

Short summary-It's not socially acceptable in contemporary usage to refer to African Americans as "Negros". And it really is a no no to use the written form "negro" to refer to African Americans.


Azizi Powell