Black and white - outdated inaccurate terminology hampers progress in racial issues

You stated that we shouldn't take the word's original meaning into consideration when using it contextually. I totally agree with your point. Actually, you agree with my point as well in some sense. Let me explain: the word "white" didn't start off as a racial classifier. Then it became one through the centuries. Then, with the revolutions happening to defend the rights of the people of color, the word lost its racist meaning and started holding a more abstract meaning: the color of one's skin.It is true that Red Indians has become an obsolete term, but that is mainly because Red Indians themselves are very small in numbers. Also, it is true that they are not truly Indians, so the naming is wrong. However, as I said, blacks and whites aren't wrong namings in that sense (more on this in a later paragraph).Let's say that you witness a theft in a shopping mall. You're being interrogated about the identity of the thief. "The thief was black," you might say, or "white". This will very much help in narrowing down who it could be, as it is something on the exterior of a person and hence something he can be described with. One might argue that terms like "African-American" or "Dark-skinned" can substitute "black". That, however, is not true, for not all black people live in America (if they're in Canada, are they "African-Canadians?) and "dark-skinned" is too vague. A tan person is dark-skinned, for example.You have no right to say the "black" and "white" are wrong to use for being inaccurate. After all, as stated above, I can call "males" by the word "banana". I'll tell my friends the code, and we'll start using it. By no right can you tell me it's wrong because males are not bananas. After all, what is language if not a set of meaningless jumbles of letter that the society agrees on giving meaning? When I said banana, I was symboling males, and my friends got it, so my idea was delivered, and so language served its purpose. You cannot, then, tell me that my usage of language is wrong, because what I said was understood by society, even if not literally accurate. In other words, if I say "the black man", you won't think of a coal-colored man, or a jet-black-colored man. You'll think of a dark-skinned man, which is what I intended. So, since language served its meaning, it cannot be argued that it's wrong.We talk about many things that are opposites in our daily lives. Men and women. Miami Heat and Lakers. The East and the West. Republicans and Democrats. This is only for the lack of a better term; when the only two genders that naturally exist are males and females (disregarding but greatly respecting intersexual and non-binary transexual people), they're ought to be viewed as opposites, even when they intersect in more than one place (both are humans, both are equals, ...)I am not claiming that there are only black and white people. Asians are neither, for example, and nor are Middle-Easterners. Same applies to genders, basketball teams, and political parties. However, the place where language was formed (let's suppose it's the US, although it's not) had a big political party or gender or whatever, and several small negligable ones (at the time). So, it is only rational that when another party or gender or basketball team emerges just as strong as the previous one, it is viewed as its opposite (they might come simultaniously, and the contradiction would be the result of the lack of other parties). This does not mean that they're opposites in the real sense; Lakers and Miami Heat both play basketball in the US and are very good teams with very talented players, and they do not contradict in any other way. Another example that won't add to the value of this but might clarify it: if you're from somewhere where soccor is the main sport, like me, then you must've been asked if you cheer for Real Madrid or Barcelona, as if they were the only two teams in the world and are in everlasting contradition, when we know it isn't true as I explained above.So, this contradiction shows nothing but the fact that blacks are regarded as equals to whites and not as a minority. The opposition in the naming does not mean opposition in meaning.