The social colors of race, here being black/ white/ red/ yellow/ brown/ beige people, are a modern invention.

“The terms Indian and Negro were both borrowed from the Hispanic languages, the one originally deriving from (mistaken) geographical locality and the other from human complexion. … After about 1680 … a new tern of self- identification appeared– white.”

Winthrop Jordan, The White Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States, (London, England: Oxford University Press, 1974), 52.