Quote:
Originally posted by Mael
if you're gonna call people with white skin caucasians, then the most accurate thing to call people with black skin i think would be negroid. i believe that would be calling everybody by the same trait. for asians it would "mongoloid." from what i understand (correct me if i'm wrong) ...snip...
|
negroid
\Ne"groid\, a. [Negro + -oid.] 1. Characteristic of the negro.
2. Resembling the negro or negroes; of or pertaining to those who resemble the negro.
the base negro means black. anything that starts with negro might as well be black. i would consider negroid an offensive term, as its most widespread use was in psuedo scientific racism. mongoloid comes from the same vein, and not only that, but is a derogotory term for sufferers of down syndrome. I would avoid using both terms.
caucasion refers to descendants of people that originated from the Caucasus mountains. So caucasion is not the anologous term for negroid because the negroid specifically ignores all such distictions or origin and reduces people to a visible physical trait.
I personally think that a new term SHOULD have been invented, but african american was a VERY poor choice. We should go back to black, because african american is both innacurate and potentially offensive as well as silly.