 "Negro" superseded "colored" as the most polite word for African Americans at a time when "black" was considered more offensive.In 17th-century Colonial America, the term "Negro" had been also, according to one historian, used to describe Native Americans.John Belton O'Neall's The Negro Law of South Carolina (1848) stipulated that "the term negro is confined to slave Africans, (the ancient Berbers) and their descendants.