What does “colored nurses” mean exactly? Am I on the phone? What am I missing?
In the Wikipedia entry listing the characters from Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, there is a line that states the following: Calpurnia
is the Finch family’s housekeeper, whom the children love and Atticus deeply respects (he remarks in her defense that she “never indulged like most colored nurses “).
What does “never indulged like most colored nurses ” mean?
Why did I just try to do this?
What we now call Afro-American is a term and a definition for two generations ago. While the last two were an acceptable synonym in US English for all African languages. Indian civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAAPC), is still known today. In fact, all the prominent organizations of the 20th century still retain their old name. But otherwise, the term is no longer used.
I thought that Calpurnia never indulged the children she took care of, as it was believed that most African-American nurses—that was, she never allowed them to do or have things they should not do or have. Or was it something that a woman that they would never have done when she had an entire body of her feces and teeth on her bed?
At other Englishes, “colored” may have the somewhat different sense of “mixed-race”.
