Black, Negro, or Afro-American?

Abstract

Race names have long been associated with the development and maintenance of racial attitudes. Indeed, when the first Europeans discovered Africa and Africans, they were quick to label Africans because this term maximized the perceived differences between African and European (Jordan, 1968). In this connection, Jordan (1968) and others (e.g., Longshore, 1979) have noted the long history of the negative connotations associated with the color black in the English lexicon. Similarly, the English language has a large number of positive connotations associated with the color white. Several researchers have argued that these positive and negative connotations are influential in the evaluative favorability/ unfavorability of the groups who have been associated