Colored is a term once widely used in the United States to refer to black people (i.e., persons of sub-Saharan African ancestry; members of the "black race") and Native Americans. It should not be confused with the more recent term people of color, which generally refers to all "non-white peoples".
In other English-speaking countries, the term has varied meanings. In South Africa, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the term Coloured refers both to a specific ethnic group of complex mixed origins, which is considered neither black nor white, and in other contexts to people of mixed race; in neither context is its usage considered derogatory. In British usage, the term refers to "a person who is wholly or partly of non-white descent" and its use may be regarded as antiquated or offensive, and other terms are preferable, particularly when referring to a single ethnicity.
Read more about Colored: History in America
Famous quotes containing the word colored:
“See, I’m so light, it don’t seem right
to go to the colored rest room;
my daughter’s brown, and folks frown on that in Texas,
I just don’t know how to go to the bathroom in the free world!”
—Ray Durem (1915–1963)
“There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about colored women, and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I’m for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.”
—Sojourner Truth (1797–1883)
“My course is a firm assertion and maintenance of the rights of the colored people of the South according to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, coupled with a readiness to recognize all Southern people, without regard to past political conduct, who will now go with me heartily and in good faith in support of these principles.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)