this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
35 points (92.7% liked)
Asklemmy
44148 readers
1482 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes. The word is "Neger", and up until very recently, that was the common term for people with darker skin tone, as "afro american" doesn't really make sense outside of america. It was used up until maybe 2000ish in a similar way to how "negro" was used in the US in the 40s and 50s (and probably later), but more broadly.
It was later replaced by "African", which doesn't really work, as the old term could mean more than just people of african heritage.
I'm not entirely sure what's the appropriate term is today - it's not like i need to refer to peoples heritage through their skin tone a whole lot.
EDIT: I just remembered from when I was a kid my aunt (who married a guy from Ghana) referring to him as "neger" some time in the 90s, so it was at least at that point in time not considered offensive.
Huh. Google Translate gives me the translation I'd expected:
In Germany, we used to have the exact same term with N, but using that term hasn't been ok since at least the early 90s.