Why do people use black, white, yellow, and brown to describe race/skin color?

Honestly, people use brown to describe hispanics, specifically mexicans, but not all hispanics are "brown skinned", in fact many of them have shades of peach, olive, light tan, and deep tan coloring. Whites are not necessarily "white", but they are peach, sometimes olive colored. And aren't "blacks" the real "browns", since many of their skin is mocha, caramel, and different shades of brown, sometimes even light in complexion? And since when did Asians have "yellow" skin? Most of them have various degrees of peach, tan, and sometimes brown coloring depending on their ethnicity. And what happens to mixed race people? Makes you think doesn't it?

Why do people use black, white, yellow, and brown to describe race/skin color?
The United States is the only country that "labels" within using colors.. In any other country that you belong to you would be considered a person of that country. Ex. If a person was from Mexico they are considered Mexican in that country no matter what shade of skin you have. Its just another method to keep people separate and segregated. Its not fair to people who are of a mixed race because they never can fit in with these "groups of color" 100%. Now they are even starting to label "white hispanic descent and black hispanic descent" Its sad. y can't we all just come together and stop and these unnecessary labeling!
Reply:Because we use blue, green, gray, purple and red in describing illnesses. Colors are useful tools.
Reply:It doesn't make me think. We sacrifice some accuracy in order to simplify conversation. Its quite common.
Reply:People use the closest general description they can. If someone asks me what color *I* am, I'm not going to say "peach", even though that's probably the closest description. One of my best friends calls herself black, but she actually has the most beautiful caramel-colored skin. I've never called anybody "yellow", personally, and I don't really know anyone who sees anyone's skin color as being yellow.
Reply:If i had to take a guess... maybe because many of the slaves that were first brought to america we really really dark, so maybe it just seemed natural to use the term black to discribe them. Now, because most african americans bloodline has traces of something else in it (from slave rapes, interracial affairs, and such), the modern black person really isn't "black" persay, but the term just stuck.





Same goes for whites. If you look at the skin color of many anglo saxons waaayyy back when, their skin was paler, lighter, more translucent than that of modern whites. So they looked lighter back then With the mixing of races, and a new enviroment, both races have evolved a bit. The terms white and black just stuck so people just use them.
Reply:Way back when - - - someone decided to divide different people by race. How they came up with white, red, yellow, black, and brown is unknown to me.


None of the colors are even close, except brown. All people are actually shades of brown. From the very lightest reddish-brown, to the very deepest brown.


Getting back to your first question ( in dark ), my answer is- - - I don't.
Reply:its simple....that's how we were brought up and that's how the story books portray it.....in stories how else were we suppose to separate the characters?
Reply:guess what we are all shades of umber, I am an artist and a few years ago was painting in Vanuatu, and a little dark umber girl said, someone had told her that she could not learn to paint because she was black. I explained to her that we are all shades of the same colour which is a variant on burnt umber. I took some burnt umber out of a tube spread a little on her arm a little on mine and lo and behold the point was proven we are all shades of umber sorry folks I am a pinky kind of umber guess what though we are all the same colour in the dark

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