Colored is an ethnic descriptor historically used in the United States (predominantly in the South during the racial segregation era) and the United Kingdom. In the US, the term denoted non-"white" individuals generally. The meaning was essentially the same in the UK, with "coloured" thus equivalent to "people of colour". However, usage of the appellation "colored" in the American South gradually came to be restricted to "negroes". Following the African-American Civil Rights Movement, "colored" and "negro" gave way to "black" and (in the US) "African American". According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word colored was first used in the 14th century, but with a meaning other than race or ethnicity.
In other English-speaking countries, the term – often spelled coloured – has varied meanings. In South Africa, Namibia, Botswana , Zambia and Zimbabwe, the name coloured (often capitalized) refers both to a specific ethnic group of complex mixed origins, which is considered neither black nor white, and in other contexts (usually lower case) to people of mixed race. In British usage, the term refers to "a person who is wholly or partly of non-white descent" and its use may be regarded as antiquated or offensive, and other terms are preferable, particularly when referring to a single ethnicity.
History in United States
In 1851, an article in The New York Times referred to the "colored population". In 1863, the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops.
The first 12 United States Census counts enumerated '"colored" people, who totaled nine million in 1900. The census counts of 1910–1960 enumerated "negroes". NPR reported that the "use of the phrase "colored people" peaked in books published in 1970". "It's no disgrace to be colored", the black entertainer Bert Williams famously observed early in the century, "but it is awfully inconvenient."
"Colored people lived in three neighborhoods that were clearly demarcated, as if by ropes or turnstiles", wrote Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. about growing up in segregated West Virginia in the 1960s. "Welcome to the Colored Zone, a large stretched banner could have said... Of course, the colored world was not so much a neighborhood as a condition of existence." "For most of my childhood, we couldn't eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn't use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores", recalls Gates. His mother retaliated by not buying clothes she was not allowed to try on. He remembered hearing a white man deliberately calling his father by the wrong name. "'He knows my name, boy,' my father said after a long pause. 'He calls all colored people George.'" When Gates's cousin became the first black cheerleader at the local high school, she was not allowed to sit with the team and drink Coke from a glass, but had to stand at the counter drinking from a paper cup. Professor Gates also wrote about his experiences in his 1995 book, Colored People: A Memoir.
In the 21st century, "colored" is generally regarded as an offensive term.
The term lives on in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, generally called NAACP. In 2008 Carla Sims, its communications director, said "the term 'colored' is not derogatory, [the NAACP] chose the word 'colored' because it was the most positive description commonly used [in 1909, when the association was founded]. It's outdated and antiquated but not offensive."