Learn English – Why are black people referred to as “colored people”

"are white people colorless? Isn't white a color too?"

There is an interesting question at Is there a word for "bright colored eyes"? that is related.

The answer to that question is that the Farsi expression assumes that everyone has brown eyes.

Coloured" is used because the people who called other people "coloured" were British who, at that time were almost 100% "white". We can therefore understand that "coloured" is a subjective term. These subjective terms are quite common descriptives in languages.

It is not the fact that white people are "colourless", it is the fact that "coloured people have "a distinct and different colour".

The adjective "coloured" was fist used around 1400 to describe the complexion of a person:

Definitions from the OED:

2. With modifying adverb. Having a complexion (of the specified kind).Recorded earliest in well-coloured adj.

a1400 tr. Lanfranc Sci. Cirurgie (Ashm.) (1894) 181 (MED) If þe pacient be fleischi & wel colourid. [if the patient is fat and has a good colour.]

This is in current use:

1996 A. Weir "Children of Henry VIII" ii. viii. 189 Mary, at thirty-seven, was small and thin, and her fresh-coloured face had been marred by years of anxiety and ill-health.

In the mid-17th century, the world was divided into white, coloured, and black:

3 b. Denoting a member of any dark-skinned group of peoples, esp. a person of sub-Saharan African or (in Britain) South Asian origin or descent; in earliest use with reference to South America.

(The reference to South America was probably because it had a very diverse population: see the 1794 quote in which the distinction between "coloured" and "black" is made.)

1758 J. Adams tr. A. de Ulloa Voy. S.-Amer. I. iii. iii. 123 The Mestizo, or negro women, or the coloured women as they are called here [sc. Panama] [Sp. las Mugeres de colòr].

1794 C. Bishop Let. 14 Dec. in Jrnl. & Lett. (1967) 23 They Reckon the White inhabitants [of Rio de Janeiro] to be one forth of the whole,..the Coloured People one forth, and from twenty to thirty thousand Blacks.

The OED notes:

Coloured was adopted in the United States by emancipated slaves as a term of racial pride after the end of the American Civil War. It was rapidly replaced from the late 1960s as a self-designation by black (see note at black adj. 3a) and later by African-American, although it is retained in the name of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In Britain, "coloured" was the commoner term for Asian, or mixed-race people until the 1960s.

So we have a split in English:

3c. Originally and chiefly U.S. Of or belonging to any group of dark-skinned people, esp. African-Americans. Also, during the era of racial segregation in the United States: intended for or restricted to African-Americans. Now usually considered offensive.

1821 Jrnl. Convent. Protestant Episcopal Church St. Paul's, Baltimore 21 The Colored School, taught in the afternoon, has 12 teachers, and 150 scholars.

In Britain, at that time. the term Black or Negro would have been used to refer to people of African descent (as in the 1821 quote), and "coloured" was restricted to those from British India or those of mixed race. e.g. A.C. Carmichael titled her 1841 book "Domestic Manners and Social Condition of the White, Coloured and Negro Population of the West Indies" It was not until much later - the late 20th entury, that the UK took up the term "coloured" to include anyone who was not white.