White, black, yellow, red

Why bother with the words the racists used ? 

White, black, yellow, red. 

You can turn them around as much as you want. They were boxes in which they put themselves and others. 

So that we forgot our common humanity. 

They chose them because they had a meaning that dated back to the European Middle Ages.

They were never meant to define "WHO" we are but "WHAT" we are supposed to be in THEIR minds. 

"WHAT" because these were first LIES and then LEGAL DEFINITIONS. In the Virginia laws of the late 1660s that DECIDED Africans were "blacks" and *therefore* slaves for generations and in the French "Le Code Noir" which stated the exact same thing. 
And it still works 300 years later, in our minds.

Now, I can understand that African-Americans (which I think is a more accurate political description) would continue to call themselves "black" as a way to "possess" the definition that those who called themselves "whites" imposed on them. 

But it doesn't change the fact that these words designate races and that races are the fundamentals of racism...