Back in the days of slavery and white sufferage, the term "negro" was an acceptable classification for even self-identifying African-Americans. In this era, people of color were viewed with a certain mystique: coming from a faraway land, having strange and even bizarre customs, physically being different in ways the average white folk couldn't even tell. So he had to guess. Stories and old wive's tales spread about the strange habit of these foreign folk, many of which inspired by the particularities of those coming from the Caribbean, especially Haiti and Barbados.
So my question is, what if, around the time of the talk of emancipation, free blacks and white intellectuals came up with a new "politically correct" term for African-Americans, say, calling them "Afro's" instead. So the common folk refer to such people as blacks or Afros...while the former term "negro" becomes associated with voodoo and mysterious practices of native Africans, wof which there were many living in the deep south. After generations of politics and storytellings, "Negro" becomes a term detached from African-Americans, and developes a common meaning similar to "wizard" or "superhuman" with the average person. Fantasy books eventually include "Negro" characters, with pure black skin and strange chants and voodoo with mystical powers. Meanwhile, "Afro" becomes an epithet towards African-Americans, who eventualy adopt more politically correct words like they do nowadays. Is this plausible? What applications and effect will we see with this new meaning of "negro"? Could we see "negros" as common characters in pop culture? Like sports teams? The New Orleans Negros? No?
So my question is, what if, around the time of the talk of emancipation, free blacks and white intellectuals came up with a new "politically correct" term for African-Americans, say, calling them "Afro's" instead. So the common folk refer to such people as blacks or Afros...while the former term "negro" becomes associated with voodoo and mysterious practices of native Africans, wof which there were many living in the deep south. After generations of politics and storytellings, "Negro" becomes a term detached from African-Americans, and developes a common meaning similar to "wizard" or "superhuman" with the average person. Fantasy books eventually include "Negro" characters, with pure black skin and strange chants and voodoo with mystical powers. Meanwhile, "Afro" becomes an epithet towards African-Americans, who eventualy adopt more politically correct words like they do nowadays. Is this plausible? What applications and effect will we see with this new meaning of "negro"? Could we see "negros" as common characters in pop culture? Like sports teams? The New Orleans Negros? No?