Color metaphors for race

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In some societies, color metaphors for race, often originating from differences in human skin color, are used in racial classifications.

Contents

Western classifications

In the West, particularly the United States, the primary color metaphor for race is the classification of persons of African ancestry as "black" and persons of European ancestry as "white". In Australia, Indigenous Australians are also called "black". The terms negro, colored, and Negroid also served as color metaphors (except in some places, such as South Africa, where coloured people were those of mixed racial descent). Even the racial slur "nigger" has etymological roots denoting color.

Similarly, persons of east Asian descent were during the late 19th century called "yellow", the yellow peril was a perceived threat from East Asian immigration. (In Germany, the color metaphor remained, with the "yellow peril" being translated literally to "gelbe Gefahr".) Native Americans were called "red", Redskins", and "Red Indians". Other racial groups have fallen under similar classifications, with brown as a general term for nonwhites. During the American occupation of the Philippines, Governor-General William Howard Taft referred to the native Filipino people as his "little brown friends".

In the United States, color metaphors are so commonplace that many anti-discrimination statutes use the phrase "race, color, or creed". A branch of the civil rights struggle by African-Americans was known as the "Black Power" movement; by extension, a similar civil rights movement among American Indians was (much less commonly) referred to as "Red Power". The metaphors are used somewhat informally in academic writing as well, as reflected (for example) in the title of Gary B. Nash's book Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America (1974).

One point of objection to these terms for race is that they can be subconsciously associated with a color's other metaphorical meanings and reinforce positive and negative self-images. [1] The numerous negative uses of black and favorable uses of white have led many people to promote other terminology for "black" people, such as "African-American". Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, and Ralph Ellison identify a number of negative metaphors in Western cultures associated with the color "black"; see Black#Usage, symbolism, colloquial expressions.

Russia

In Russia, persons of Caucasus descent are called Black. (See also Racism in Russia). The term White Russian is both an (offensive) term for Belarusians (whose country, Belarus, is etymologically "White Russia" and was once called the same) and a term denoting opponents of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (see White movement for this usage).

India

The Sanskrit word for "caste" is वर्ण (varṇa) which has several literal meanings including "color".

China

Huang (yellow) is a common surname, but does not refer to the East Asian race as was popular in Western languages until recently. However, the Yellow Emperor was a legendary founder of China. Yellow is also identified with the "center" cardinal direction, while China is known as Zhongguo "middle country".

"Hua" (華), one of the most common terms for "Chinese", literally means "multicolored", "flowery", or "splendid".

Bai (white) means "plain" or "free of charge" in many common expressions and was not traditionally used to refer to Europeans and descendants, who were indentified as people from "[across the] ocean" or some variety of "barbarian". Contemporary Chinese, has, however, adopted Western usage to a large extent.

Names of ethnic minorities sometimes contain colors, not to indicate skin color, but simply for identification, possibly based on traditional clothing or geographical direction.

  • Red, Black, Blue/Green, White, Flowery (multicolored) Miao (Hmong)
  • Bai (literally White) are a sedentary lowland people of Yunnan
  • Black Bone and White Bone Yi
  • The Qing dynasty military were divided into Eight Banners identified by color and with ethnic associations

Central Asia

The five cardinal directions were historically identified with colors. This was common to the Central Asian cultural area and was carried west by the westward migration of the Turks. These directional color terms were applied both to geographic features and sometimes to populations as well.

Notes and references

  1. ^  Moore, Roger B., Racism in the English Language, 1976; Hughes, Langston, "That Word Black", The Return of Simple
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