Should We Continue to Accept Labels, Black & White to Denote Race or Class?

ORIGINS OF THE WORD BLACK: Tribes, who inhabited Europe during the first millennium BCE, used the term blak-.Old English speakers, the Anglo-Saxons, transformed the word into blaec and began to associate it directly with the color. At the same time, they were also using the word blac to mean white or bright. The words were so similar that translators are sometimes left scratching their heads as they try to determine whether the writer was describing something that was black or white. Black was also used as a verb. For example, one 16th century text reads, “The paper will be blacked by smoke.” Around this time, the English people began to use it as a noun to describe professional mourners or a person with dark skin.

ORIGINS OF THE WORD WHITE: Etymologists, or language experts, believe the word white got its start in Proto-Indo-European, a tongue that died out thousands of years ago but gave birth to many modern languages, including English, Welsh, Lithuanian, and Armenian. There’s no written evidence of the Indo-European language, so experts are forced to make the educated guess that the word for white was kwintos.

The ancient Romans had two words for white; albus, a plain white, (the source of the word albino); and candidus, a brighter white. This ancient word then entered another defunct language called Proto-Germanic. Like its predecessor, the word for white in Proto-Germanic is lost, so etymologists hypothesize that word was khwitaz.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/08/do_white_people_really_come_from_the_caucasus.html