The Negro reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Negro

Negro means the color black in Spanish and Portuguese languages, derived from the Latin word niger of the same meaning.

The term negro was formerly used to refer to Sub-Saharan Africans and people with that heritage, such as African Americans. From the 18th century to the mid-20th century it was considered the correct and proper term for African-Americans, but fell out of favor by the 1970s, in the United States. In current English-language usage, the word is generally considered acceptable only in a historical context or in the name of older organizations such as the United Negro College Fund.

In the Italian language, negro was used as a synonim for "coloured" until it became a politically uncorrect word in the 1960's, due to a wider and wider pejorative and racist connotation. Today in Italy using the term negro to refer to a coloured person is considered a trivial and fascist insult.

See also: colored

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