Is negro a bad word

Answer 1

negro is not a bad word

Some blacks prefer the term Negro to African American or Black, Martian Luther King used the word negro in a descriptive term so did Malcolm X, The Term "African American" has been used more recently that is why people think its a bad word

Answer:There is no such thing as a bad word, only bad uses for words. Words are used for communication, the expression of thoughts and ideas. Nothing more. They cannot be innately good nor bad.

That being said, the word negro has been used in positive, neutral, and negative ways, and for some people it automatically draws a negative connotation. The fact is that it has no connotation other than the derivation of a group of people. That group is distinguished as being neither Caucasian nor Mongoloid, the other two of the three great races.

Anthropology teaches that there are three races of humans: Caucasian (people of northern European descent), Mongoloid (people of Northern and eastern Asian descent), and Negroid (people of Central and southern African descent). This is a classification system developed to describe the various races of humans, and ostensibly contains all of the sub-races (a scientific use of the term) of humans.

The fact of the matter is that all three terms have come by the actions of a few to be considered offensive, although were not originally intended to be. The term negro, as a shortened form of Negroid, is one of these examples.

It has been suggested that the word negro has its roots in Latin (niger), Portuguese (negro), and Greek (Négros), and was adopted by the Spanish. This is very well likely. The term translates as black, the color. It is extrapolated that this is a reference to skin color, and there is no reason to doubt this assumption. While people of African descent are more accurately brown, the use of labels such as the term Negro is intended to hyperbolize the differences between two individuals. Much as the word white is used to refer to Caucasian who are more accurately pink. This is what people do; it is human nature. It cannot be taught or conditioned out of behavior. It is part of what we are and how we behave.

Consider for a moment: is there anything at all in existence that you can think of that does not have a name? The simple answer is "no." If it exists, if a conception (a manifestation of the ideal or form) of it exists, someone, somewhere has named it, given it a label, a way to identify it to another person. It becomes the manifestation of that quintessential human trait, pointing. No other animal on this planet has the ability to point. It can be argued that pointers point, but they do not. The canine breed pointer, does what it has been conditioned by nature and man to do, freeze facing in the direction of prey. Others argue that chimpanzees and other primates point, but the hand movement that approximates the human gesture of an raised arm and hand with the index finger extended is not pointing to a chimp or one of our other distant cousins. Pointing in the human sense is a way of indicating and recognizing something outside of ourselves, something different, AND calling attention of another of our kind to that something. In a single smooth, simple gesture we say when we point, "Hey, you who is like me, look at this thing to which I am gesturing that is different and interesting." In a nutshell, the totality of the human ability with language is just another way of pointing.

By extension, this is what the term negro is. By extension, this is what every word ever created and conceived of by man is. It is pointing. Neither good nor bad, just indifferent. How you use it is another matter.