But it superceded the Western civilization distinction between civilized men and savages. Better to be a negro than a mere savage.
Kipling saw it coming, as through a glass darkly, way back then.
Negro used to be the standard, but changed to black, which few if any negroes are, then to African Americans, a black American as distinct from a white one. Mulattos, of which there are a hell of a lot, different story.
No one ever thought of calling a negro a black at the time of the Civil War:
' "...race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in states where slavery was never known."(AT) Even in the northern states where black citizens theoretically enjoyed equal rights, he reported, they were too afraid to assert them. Those states that had abolished slavery had done so not to help the black man, but to help the white, both by leaving free labor without the competition of slaves and by eliminating the corrupting influence of owning slaves upon the whites.' DK, 2016
The usual distinction between caucasians and negroes and others of color at the time of the Civil War was that of whites and savages:
The White Man's Burden — The United States and the Philippine Islands by Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden —
Send forth the best ye breed —
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild —
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden —
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden —
The savage wars of peace —
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden —
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper —
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden —
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard —
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: —
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden —
Ye dare not stoop to less —
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden —
Have done with childish days —
The lightly profferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
No one thinks of calling a Chinese a yellow, or a Hindu a ginger.
If one Asian doesn't like another, he often call him a monkey, usually meaning a black hairy ape. Even a Krugman Moron is better, higher on the scale of humanity. A savage is one step above a monkey.I now prefer colored, because I can lump people of different civilizations colors and races together, INDISCRIMINATELY, as they each lump so called whites (rather than caucasians) together indiscriminately, and frankly as they lump themselves together now, as people of color, which is great with me.
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