It's another to use this term for them when you're around them. Note, it's one thing if you're talking about them to someone else.

The person I saw was a beautiful, tall, black woman with long, straightened hair. You may also be better able to use the term as one of several. Sometimes, however, it becomes at least useful to be able to do this. You will find some people who feel that any distinguishing of a person by their appearance is inappropriate. In the situation you're in, where the point is to use a distinguishing feature to describe the person and you can reasonably trust that they have some African heritage, the best term is 'black'.

If regional differences matter, this is the Midwest (Ohio), and I'd like to know if it is different in different parts of the country. What would be the proper way to refer to a person with dark brown skin who is not African American? They couldn't have referred to this person as 'African American', since they just moved from the Caribbean (the person forgot what country they were from, but knew it wasn't Africa). The coworker clearly thought it was inappropriate to refer to the person as 'black', but felt it necessary to say because no other descriptors were working. He was kind of tall and had short hair.Ĭoworker: He was at Mary's retirement party and gave a speech.Ĭoworker: He's black. It went something like this:Ĭoworker: One of the people on the other team came by and said he wanted talk with you.Ĭoworker: I don't remember. I had a conversation recently where someone was deathly afraid of referring to a person by their skin color.

Darker than black dark skin