> If something is "black and white", there's a clear right and wrong. In our language, "black" is synonymous with "wrong", and yet this word with negative connotations is used for an entire race of people.
I don't think most people think like that. Black and white in that meaning is used in very specific contexts, not in general. Nobody thinks that a "black and white film" is about moral issues. In German, "black on white" (schwarz auf weiß) refers to (usually black) ink on (usually white) paper and nobody has race on their mind when they say it. We're not wearing black at funerals "because it's wrong that somebody died". Black numbers are good ("schwarze Zahlen schreiben" = "writing black numbers" = earning money), red numbers usually aren't. Waving the white flag isn't great. Black/brown bread is delicious, and so is Schwarzbier if you're into stronger tastes in beer, and you can get black-out drunk with enough of it. There's really no association with Africans with that usage of "black".
I have a feeling that a lot of people believe that first came racism and Europeans looking down on Africans and then came "black = bad" associations in language. There was no European colonialism back then, Northern African slave raiders regularly went on slave raids to (mostly Southern) Europe etc. The use of black in that sense is, at least in German, at least 1200 years old, long before significant contact between Central Europe and Africa.
I don't think most people think like that. Black and white in that meaning is used in very specific contexts, not in general. Nobody thinks that a "black and white film" is about moral issues. In German, "black on white" (schwarz auf weiß) refers to (usually black) ink on (usually white) paper and nobody has race on their mind when they say it. We're not wearing black at funerals "because it's wrong that somebody died". Black numbers are good ("schwarze Zahlen schreiben" = "writing black numbers" = earning money), red numbers usually aren't. Waving the white flag isn't great. Black/brown bread is delicious, and so is Schwarzbier if you're into stronger tastes in beer, and you can get black-out drunk with enough of it. There's really no association with Africans with that usage of "black".
I have a feeling that a lot of people believe that first came racism and Europeans looking down on Africans and then came "black = bad" associations in language. There was no European colonialism back then, Northern African slave raiders regularly went on slave raids to (mostly Southern) Europe etc. The use of black in that sense is, at least in German, at least 1200 years old, long before significant contact between Central Europe and Africa.