Color Names and Color Notions

Abstract

Although few Negroes are willing to concede the validity of the assertion that plays any significant role in the organization of Negro society, there is ample evidence that differences in skin receive at least verbal recognition in the Negro community.' In popular ditties, in songs about brownskin 'gals', in off color jokes and indelicate stories there are numerous suggestions of the names which, from time to time, have been used to describe the various shades and of the stereotyped conceptions of what each shade or group is like.2 Such names as black, high yellow, chocolate, high brown and sealskin have a wide currency in Negro circles.