Why are black people are called black when they are really brown?

Answer 1

This is a difficult question to answer... many people who are (or whose ancestors were) born in central or southern (sub-Sahara) Africa have a lot of melanin (the same dark pigment that can give Europeans or people descended from Europeans a suntan), and this makes their skin dark.

Travelling in Africa (or even in other countries where there are many people of sub-Sahara African origin) you will see people from different areas with somewhat lighter brown to almost blue-black skin tones. When the Portugese navigators explored the coasts of Africa during the time of Prince Henry the Navigator (mid to late 1400s) they chose a word in their language to describe the coloration -- this word was "*****", meaning exactly "black". They and other Europeans who had encountered people from these areas chose to make skin color a racial discriminator, and so we had "white" and "black" races, sometimes called "caucasian" as the white skinned people were thought to have come from the Caucasus (in the area of today's Ukraine).

There are many other people with skins as dark as many of African ancestry but they were considered to belong to other races, such as the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, people from Melanesia, and some people from the Indian subcontinent.

***** as a name for a racial group fell out of favor in the 1960s, generally, in the United States. For a while people that had been considered ***** appeared to want to be called Black, but later African-American came to be the more official term for people who formerly were considered of "Black" and earlier "*****" races.

It's my opinion that describing an individual should best be done by describing the individual, rather than by his or her ancestry or a racial statement about that person. Thus, I think describing a person as a black (lower case - not a racial name) should be preferred, but I don't think it is.

This word was

Answer 2

Well.. I guess first you have to think about who started calling them that, the European people of the 17th, 18th, and 19th century. Their only point of reference was themselves. So in comarpision to their fair skin, those of African decent seemed black in color. They were also called *****, which means black in Spanish, only pronounced with a short e sound not a long one.

Answer 3

When Africans first came to America from Africa they were much darker than black people today. Also, "black" is a generic term not to be taken literally.

Answer 4

Cause their skin color are closer to black like whites are closer to pile blue.
How did the Spanish call brown and Asians call yellow I like to know?

Answer 5

For the same reason white people are called white even though they are really pink. It is just a name.

Answer 6

the same reason white people are called white when they are really pink, or as my son used to say, peachy-tan

its a simplification so that we can group people

this grouping rarely has value, and often is harmful

Answer 7

Brown was already taken by the Mexicans...

Answer 8

Who ever invented the terms white man and black man must have been colour blind.

Answer 9

cos they worked as chimney cleaners in a past life. the soot from the chimney stayed permanenetly on their skin, and hence the name 'black'.

Answer 10

white guys like me oversimplyifying things