Negro
The word “
Negro” is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance. The word
negro denotes 'black' in the Spanish and Portuguese, derived from the ancient Latin word,
niger, 'black', which itself ultimately is probably from a Proto-Indo-European root
*nekw-, 'to be dark', akin to
*nokw- 'night'. "Negro" superseded "colored" as the most polite terminology, at a time when "black" was more offensive. This usage was accepted as normal, even by people classified as Negroes, until the later Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s. One well-known example is the identification by Martin Luther King, Jr. of his own race as 'Negro' in his famous 1963 speech I Have a Dream. During the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some black American leaders in the United States, notably Malcolm X, objected to the word "Negro" because they associated the word Negro with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second class citizens, or worse. Since the late 1960s, various other terms have been more widespread in popular usage.