National
‘Negro’ is Still an Approved Way to Refer to Black People, Says US Army
Soldiers of the U.S. Army 23rd Chemical Battalion. (Lee Jin-man/AP)
(The Independent) – A recently-updated US Army handbook has been found to include “Negro” as an approved term to use when describing black people.
The unclassified document outlines the military’s “Army Command Policy”, known as regulation AR 600-20, and features a set of racial “definitions” in a chapter on equal opportunities.
Sandwiched between descriptions of what “prejudice” and “racism” mean in the context of the armed forces, a paragraph on “black or African American” reads: “A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. Terms such as ‘Haitian’ or ‘Negro’ can be used in addition to ‘Black’ or ‘African American’.
The US army has confirmed that the term remains in use in the document, which was revised and republished as recently as 22 October.
