Moldbug bafflingly decides to call black people “Negroes” (while offering some weird historical justification for doing so).
What is baffling to me is that it is ok to call black people black people. Both terms amount to labelling a race based on the same exaggerated description of a visible difference and in general requiring latin use is higher status than common English words. Prior to specific (foreign) cultural exposure I would expect “black people” to be an offensive label and so avoid it.
The euphemism treadmill is basically arbitrary most of the time. For example, “people of color” is very PC right now, but “colored people” is considered KKK-language. It is what it is.
Also black people is a kind of strange term. Pretty much all black people are okay with it, but a lot of white people are weirdly afraid of saying it, especially in formal settings.
What is baffling to me is that it is ok to call black people black people. Both terms amount to labelling a race based on the same exaggerated description of a visible difference and in general requiring latin use is higher status than common English words. Prior to specific (foreign) cultural exposure I would expect “black people” to be an offensive label and so avoid it.
The euphemism treadmill is basically arbitrary most of the time. For example, “people of color” is very PC right now, but “colored people” is considered KKK-language. It is what it is.
Also black people is a kind of strange term. Pretty much all black people are okay with it, but a lot of white people are weirdly afraid of saying it, especially in formal settings.
Black is a useful term for referring to people of African descent who aren’t African-American, e.g. Caribbean-Americans.
“People of color” currently means anyone other than white people, not black people exclusively.
Really? That is even more surprising to me.
My experience is it is the prefered term of the Social Justice Crowd on Tumblr and other websites for non-white people.
Language can be pretty arbitrary. It’s not as though science fiction reliably has any science in it, even fake science.