Col­ored Peo­ple: A Mem­oir - Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry (1994)

• Re­port rights in­fringe­ment
• pub­lished: 08 Feb 2014
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Col­ored is a term used in the Unit­ed States to refer to black peo­ple (i.e., per­sons of sub-Sa­ha­ran African an­ces­try; mem­bers of the black race). Since the suc­cess of the African-Amer­i­can Civil rights move­ment, the term, along with "negro" and oth­ers, has been large­ly re­placed by "black." Ac­cord­ing to the Mer­ri­am-Web­ster dic­tio­nary, the word col­ored was first used in the 14th Cen­tu­ry. In other En­glish-speak­ing coun­tries, the term has var­ied mean­ings. In South Africa, Namib­ia, Zam­bia and Zim­bab­we, the term Coloured refers both to a spe­cif­ic eth­nic group of com­plex mixed ori­gins, which is con­sid­ered nei­ther black nor white, and in other con­texts to peo­ple of mixed race; in nei­ther con­text is its usage con­sid­ered deroga­to­ry. In British usage, the term refers to "a per­son who is whol­ly or part­ly of non-white de­scent" and its use may be re­gard­ed as an­ti­quat­ed or of­fen­sive, and other terms are prefer­able, par­tic­u­lar­ly when re­fer­ring to a sin­gle eth­nic­i­ty. The term should not be con­fused with the term peo­ple of color, which gen­er­al­ly refers to all non-white peo­ple. The term col­ored ap­peared in North Amer­i­ca dur­ing the colo­nial era. In 1851 an ar­ti­cle in the New York Times re­ferred to the "col­ored pop­u­la­tion". In 1863, the War De­part­ment es­tab­lished the Bu­reau of Col­ored Troops. The first 12 Cen­sus counts in the U.S. enu­mer­at­ed '"col­ored" peo­ple, who to­taled nine mil­lion in 1900. The Cen­sus counts of 1910--1960 enu­mer­at­ed "ne­groes." "It's no dis­grace to be col­ored," the black en­ter­tain­er Bert Williams fa­mous­ly ob­served early in the cen­tu­ry, "but it is aw­ful­ly in­con­ve­nient." "Col­ored peo­ple lived in three neigh­bor­hoods that were clear­ly de­mar­cat­ed, as if by ropes or turn­stiles," writes Har­vard pro­fes­sor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. about grow­ing up in seg­re­gat­ed West Vir­ginia in the 1960s. "Wel­come to the Col­ored Zone, a large stretched ban­ner could have said... Of course, the col­ored world was not so much a neigh­bor­hood as a con­di­tion of ex­is­tence." "For most of my child­hood, we couldn't eat in restau­rants or sleep in ho­tels, we couldn't use cer­tain bath­rooms or try on clothes in stores," re­calls Gates. His moth­er re­tal­i­at­ed by not buy­ing clothes she was not al­lowed to try on. He re­mem­bered hear­ing a white man de­lib­er­ate­ly call­ing his fa­ther by the wrong name. "'He knows my name, boy,' my fa­ther said after a long pause. 'He calls all col­ored peo­ple George.'" When Gates' fe­male cousin be­came the first black cheer­lead­er at the local high school, she was not al­lowed to sit with the team in a Nau­gahyde booth and drink Coke from a glass, but had to stand at the counter drink­ing from a paper cup. Pro­fes­sor Gates also wrote about his ex­pe­ri­ences in his 1995 book, Col­ored Peo­ple: A Mem­oir. In the 21st cen­tu­ry, col­ored is gen­er­al­ly not re­gard­ed as a po­lit­i­cal­ly cor­rect term. It lives on in the as­so­ci­a­tion name Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion for the Ad­vance­ment of Col­ored Peo­ple, gen­er­al­ly called just NAACP, with­out ac­tu­al­ly enun­ci­at­ing the word for which each let­ter stands. In 2008 Carla Sims, com­mu­ni­ca­tions di­rec­tor for the NAACP in Wash­ing­ton DC, said "the term 'col­ored' is not deroga­to­ry, [the NAACP] chose the word 'col­ored' be­cause it was the most pos­i­tive de­scrip­tion com­mon­ly used [in 1909, when the as­so­ci­a­tion was found­ed]. It's out­dat­ed and an­ti­quat­ed but not of­fen­sive." To date, there has not been a move­ment to change the name of the or­ga­ni­za­tion to a more po­lit­i­cal­ly cor­rect term such as the "Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion for the Ad­vance­ment of African-Amer­i­cans." http://​en.​wikipedia.​org/​wiki/​Colored Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr., (born Septem­ber 16, 1950) is an Amer­i­can lit­er­ary crit­ic, ed­u­ca­tor, schol­ar, writ­er, and ed­i­tor. He was the first African Amer­i­can to re­ceive the An­drew W. Mel­lon Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship. He has re­ceived nu­mer­ous hon­orary de­grees and awards for his teach­ing, re­search, and de­vel­op­ment of aca­dem­ic in­sti­tu­tions to study black cul­ture. In 2002, Gates was se­lect­ed to give the Jef­fer­son Lec­ture, in recog­ni­tion of his "dis­tin­guished in­tel­lec­tu­al achieve­ment in the hu­man­i­ties." Gates has host­ed sev­er­al PBS tele­vi­sion minis­eries, in­clud­ing the his­to­ry and trav­el pro­gram Won­ders of the African World and the bi­o­graph­i­cal African Amer­i­can Lives and Faces of Amer­i­ca. Gates sits on the boards of many no­table arts, cul­tur­al, and re­search in­sti­tu­tions. He serves as the Alphonse Fletch­er Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, where he is di­rec­tor of the W. E. B. Du Bois In­sti­tute for African and African Amer­i­can Re­search. Gates host­ed Faces of Amer­i­ca, a four-part se­ries pre­sent­ed by PBS in 2010. This pro­gram ex­am­ined the ge­neal­o­gy of 12 North Amer­i­cans of di­verse an­ces­try: Eliz­a­beth Alexan­der, Mario Batali, Stephen Col­bert, Louise Er­drich, Mal­colm Glad­well, Eva Lon­go­ria, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Nichols, Queen Noor, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Meryl Streep, and Kristi Ya­m­aguchi. http://​en.​wikipedia.​org/​wiki/​Henry_​Louis_​Gates Image By Jon Irons [CC-BY-2.0 (http://​creativecommons.​org/​licenses/​by/​2.0)], via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons