Colin Powell is "black."

Julian, you missed and continue to miss the whole point of why the joke Oz posted was pulled. It wasn't about the use of the word black. It was a racist joke combined with a misogynist joke. (That's mean and disrespectful to women.)

Please, stop thumping your chest and crying in your beer over that joke being pulled. You and everyone else who defended it are only making yourselves look pretty darn silly.

For reasons of pride and diginity, people of African extraction wish to be called simply "blacks"

This replaces the term "Negroes"

Which replaced "colored people"

Which relpaced "African-American"

Which replaced "darkies"

Which replaced "blacks"

Editorial cartoon -- can't recall the paper, but it was reproduced in NEWSWEEK magazine

In the summer of 1968 - I am NOT kidding

But then I?m not white, I am kinda pink. I wish I had some of his brown though. I sun burn easily. Now my wife!?! She?s a darky! She?s got brown! Brown is good! For that matter purple is good. Red, yellow black and white they are precious in his sight?
Seriously ? Colin Powell is a brilliant man who has achieved a great deal in his life and I for one greatly admire and respect him. I don?t care what color he is. Martin Luther King had a dream where all of God?s children could join hand in hand and sing free at last free at last thank God almighty I am free at last.
Although I am a staunch conservative who wouldn?t move back to California if you paid me to I can say that was one great thing about growing up there. My best friend was Asian and I introduced him to his wife 20 years ago (wow I?m dating myself now) and she?s white. Our class president was black. I was raised in a race free zone. These people weren?t black or Asians or white. We were people with names and lives who mattered and deserved respect. I still hold onto those values and I am passing them onto my children.