The etymology of "people of colour": an appeal
By my bedside at the moment is "Asians in Britain: 400 years of History" by Rozina Visram. It contains a reference to a line item in the accounts of the British Government's Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor dated 1786, referring to "relief to the 'Blacks and People of Colour'"(p. 21). This is the oldest reference to the term 'people of colour' that I've yet seen. Any suggestions in tracking down the etymology gratefully received...
1 Comments:
Dr G sez:
This will be a tough one. An etymological dictionary will only have entries for individual words. I did a quick search of online idiom dictionaries, but didn’t find anything. Actually, by definition, “people of colo(u)r” probably can’t be considered an idiom, since it is so literal.
This sounds like the kind of distinction that was made in apartheid South Africa between “blacks” and “colored” people. Perhaps there is (somewhere) a dictionary of the lingo used by colonial powers?
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