Why do they call the races "white" and "black" if people are really tan and brown?
by 
KiloWattKid
ANSWERS: 7
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It's simply a perception. A matter of interpretation. A darker skinned person when first seen by a caucasion, probably seemed black, simply because he had never seen anyone so dark before. The opposite may be true for the first black man who saw a white. I'm just guessing. The truth is that we are all different shades of the same color. There is only one color of human skin pigment. Caucasions simply have less of it than all other races. That's why we are tan, not white.
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Throughout American history, black people have always been oppressed primarily because of their race. They were called many derogatory names to degrade them. Many Americans of European decent refered to them as "Negros" as a non derogatory name in the late nineteenth century. In the early sixties, the civil rights movement had altered the racial profiling of Negros to the term of "colored." In later years, colored Americans were content with being refered to as "black." However,in recent years, the term "black" was changed to "African American" as a choice of political correctness. To answer your question, being refered to as black or white is just a short and simple way to express the two races of people. Rather than refering the two races of people as Caucasion or Negro, it's much more simplified and non derogatory to refer to them as white or black.
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I know this is off the subject but....I simply have a question....Why are all black people called African American if all black people don't have an African decent? I don't understand...I am brown skinned but my heritage on my mother's side is italian and my heritage on my dad's side is Irish...so what shall I be called brown Italian, Irish American...lol?
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Simply because for society it is easier to describe a person for their color as apposed to their ethnic background. For instance, they would not say that the guy who mugged me looked tan or Italian. they would say he was white....;)
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I don't believe history adequate records the origins of the use. Herodotus described the skin of Ethiopians as burnt, for example. It may be lost in translation over millenia.
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People like to place things in stark, mutually exclusive categories so they can deal with them more easily. It's a survival characteristic. Being able to quickly categorize an animal as "Predator" can help prevent problems. : )) It's only when we apply that same tendendy to categorize to ourselves that we run into difficulties. We tend to make two categories ( at least ): "Like us" and "not like us," with subcategories like "White" and "Black," which are a lot easier to manage than twenty different shades of color. : )
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white people simply like to segerate excuse whit people back then loved to segergate and point out the difference of something
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