Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 April 3

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April 3

When were the racial terms derived?

When I look at old photographs from the 19th century, I see all black and white, and the people are literally black and white. When I see people in the real world, they are not black and white. They are in full color. White people don't have white skin. They have a range of skin colors - from brownish to very light beige. Sometimes, albino people exist. Black people rarely have black skin. They have some variation of brown - light brown, dark brown, very dark brown. When were the racial terms derived? Who made up these terms in the first place? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 14:50, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

18th century, at least. See Historical race concepts. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:17, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I suspect that color photography's then-experimental and rare nature, combined with the still-prevalent contrast problems made people look lighter or darker than they really were. Even today, it's ridiculously easy to mess up contrast and push middle tones out toward extreme edges. I'm a white guy living in China. When supposedly-professional photographers around here use the same techniques and settings on me that they use on everyone else around here, I end up looking like a meth-addled ghost who needs some lotion. In America, my ID photos still look like mugshots, but at least I look like I do in the mirror and not look like Andy Serkis's Gollum in a Shaggy Rogers costume. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:35, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Since color photography was experimental and rare even in the late 19th century, it seems safe to assume that the original poster is talking about black and white photography.

I think it's a plausible hypothesis that in the time when those photos were taken, the distribution of skin colors in the general population was different than today. This might depend on what country the original poster is looking at photos from. The US (in many states) and South Africa immediately come to mind as places where interracial marriage used to be prohibited until well into the 20th century; and where it wasn't prohibited, it may still have been unpopular. So you would expect more people to be either purely "white" (nothern European ancestry) or "black" (e.g. African ancestry) in the 19th century than now. However, the concept of race has been applied differently in different countries. When Trevor Noah came to US television, he said something to the effect that "in this country I finally know what I am, I'm black." In South Africa the marriage of his parents had been illegal and he was not considered black.

However, saying that the range of skin colors may have been different is just a hypothesis: I don't have actual data. --76.71.6.254 (talk) 19:00, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Getting back to the title question, White people#Modern racial hierarchies says The term "white race" or "white people" entered the major European languages in the later 17th century, originating with the racialization of slavery at the time, in the context of the Atlantic slave trade[12] and the enslavement of native peoples in the Spanish Empire.[13] . Loraof (talk) 19:25, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

According to www.etymonline.com, red for Native Americans, 1580s; colored for nonwhites, first attested in 1610s; black persons, African, at least from 1620s (and perhaps since late 13th century, and blackamoor from the 1540s); yellow for Asians 1787; high yellow 1808; white for Europeans, 1828. —Stephen (talk) 20:01, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

The semantic range of some of these terms has also shifted. There's an probably-never-to-be-resolved debate as to whether Shakespeare's Othello, who is described repeatedly as "black", was meant to be black as we think of it now (sub-Saharan African), or rather Arab. --Trovatore (talk) 20:42, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

In Shakespeare's day and afterwards, "black" was commonly be used to describe people in Britain who were racially white, but had dark hair and perhaps a slightly "swarthy" skin color (as opposed to those who were "fair" and had light-colored hair) -- much the same as "dark" in "tall, dark and handsome" in the 20th century... AnonMoos (talk) 23:14, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Some English-American writers, especially in New England, referred to the skin color of Native Americans as "black" from the 17th well into the 18th centuries. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:26, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

We also refer to "white wine" and "red wine", even though red wine is rarely red and white wine is never white. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:05, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I think that's quite an important point. In English (and I suspect other languages) it is extremely common to simplify colours when used in names. E.g. "red" or "yellow" ochre (which might more accurately be described as reddish and yellowish brown); white/red/black grapes (actually green, purple, and very dark purple); bluestone generally looks pretty grey and only appears blue (if at all) in comparison to greyer rocks; a robin's breast is more orange than red; etc. Iapetus (talk) 16:18, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Wardog -- I think that "robin blue" is usually supposed to be short for Robin egg blue... AnonMoos (talk) 03:16, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

An unrelated bird though AnonMoos; see American robin and British robin. Alansplodge (talk) 08:14, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I misunderstood what he was saying anyway; he was actually alluding to the phrase "Robin redbreast", it seems... AnonMoos (talk) 10:44, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

It gets very confusing having unrelated blackbirds and robins on either side of the Atlantic. Alansplodge (talk) 12:59, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

It also gets confusing having two only marginally related languages on either side, but we sometimes manage to struggle through. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:32, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of photographs and racism, this may be of interest. Matt Deres (talk) 15:51, 4 April 2017 (UTC)