Ethnic slurs develope different connotations

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?
 
The New Orleans Negros starting off as an All-Afro team?

That's beautiful. However I don't imagine Negro getting some of the connotations- after all, Voodoo is in no way a superhero's power. So I guess New Orleans will have to go for the name no one else wants.
 

The Vulture

Banned
It's a very creative idea, I'll give you that.

Would there be a diminutive on the word? Would it be acceptable or complementary to call a person of another race that?
 
The New Orleans Negros starting off as an All-Afro team?

That's beautiful. However I don't imagine Negro getting some of the connotations- after all, Voodoo is in no way a superhero's power. So I guess New Orleans will have to go for the name no one else wants.
Well I was thinking of a different American pop culture perception on voodoo and Native African culture, so that it'd be viewed more like how witchcraft is portrayed in today's pop culture.
 
It's a very creative idea, I'll give you that.

Would there be a diminutive on the word? Would it be acceptable or complementary to call a person of another race that?
...I can't think of an OTL equivalent, but I would think the word "negro" would be so distanced from a black person that people wouldn't even associate one with the other, except in a purely historical perspective. It'd be as silly as referring to an Arab person as a genie. Which gives me another thought. A culturally-defining novel or something that gives a specific picture of the idealized "mystical negro" would do much to further the imagery of the word in the sense of what it'd mean ITTL.
 
I thought negro was just derived from latin, and translates as black. I know in Italiano black is nero (although, I don't think they'd take to kindly to being called Nero). As for the N-word; I figured it's offensive because it meant slave, piece of property, not-a-person.
 
Portugal was the first to get all into the black slavery business, and Negro does happen to mean "dark" in Portuguese...

... Which, when I think about it, is all the more reason that this would be possible; keep being called what the first European slavers named you, or get a new name?
 
Actually, the portuguese meaning gives us another starting point. Perhaps the initial meaning is 'dark' wizard/priest, which eventually becomes applied to all witchdoctors etc.
 
Actually, the portuguese meaning gives us another starting point. Perhaps the initial meaning is 'dark' wizard/priest, which eventually becomes applied to all witchdoctors etc.
Exactly! That's a bit earlier POD than I hoped, because then it'd probably never be applied to your average African. But this is the best shot at changing the meaning, especoially if it came to the same connotation as "black magic".
 
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