When George was young, ‘black’ was a vulgar term, ‘colored’ was more dainty, and ‘Negro’ was the polite word, used by the liberal New York Times, always with a capital letter, like ‘Jew’. Now ‘Negro’ was considered condescending and ‘coloured’ evasive, and everyone talked about black people, the black community, black pride, and even black power. Black is beautiful, they said. George was not sure how much difference the words made.