Edited by Azizi Powell
This is Part III of a three part pancocojams series on the referent "Colored" in the United States.
This post lists and presents information about some African American cultural examples that include the racial referent "Colored" in the United States in the 1960s to date (2026).
This post lists and presents information about some cultural uses of the racial referent "Colored" in the United States from the mid 20th century to 2026.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-history-and-uses-of-referent.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. That post presents a complete reprint of the Wikipedia page and an AI Overview about the referent "Colored" in the United States (retrieved March 16, 2026).
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/03/examples-of-official-or-cultural-uses.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. That post lists and provides information about some official United States examples and some African American cultural examples that include the racial referent "colored" from the 19th century through the 1950s.
The content of this post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, and educational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are showcased in this post and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/03/is-coloured-race-or-culture-in-southern.html for a 2026 pancocojams post entitled Is "Coloured" A Race or A Culture In Southern Africa? (YouTube Discussion Thread Comments From A 2025 The Pensuel Show Podcast)
Links to two other pancocojams posts about the history and uses of the referent "Coloured" in the nation of South Africa and in some other southern African nations are found in that post..
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EXAMPLES OF SOME CULTURAL USES OF THE REFERENT "COLORED" IN THE UNITED STATES (from the 1960S TO THE 2020s)
These examples are given in chronological order. Additions and corrections are welcome.
1960s
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1974-for colored girls who have considered suicide /when the rainbow is enuf"
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Colored_Girls_Who_Have_Considered_Suicide_/_When_the_Rainbow_Is_Enuf
As a choreopoem, the piece is a series of 20 separate poems choreographed to music that weaves interconnected stories of love, empowerment, struggle and loss into a complex representation of sisterhood. The cast consists of seven nameless African-American women only identified by the colors they are assigned. They are the lady in red, lady in orange, lady in yellow, lady in green, lady in blue, lady in brown, and lady in purple. Subjects including rape, abandonment, abortion and domestic violence are tackled.[6] Shange originally wrote the monologues as separate poems in 1974. Her writing style is idiosyncratic and she often uses vernacular language, unique structure, and unorthodox punctuation to emphasize syncopation. Shange wanted to write for colored girls... in a way that mimicked how real women speak so she could draw her readers' focus to the experience of reading and listening.[7]
[...]
Title
for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf is inspired by events in Shange's life. Shange admitted publicly to having attempted suicide on four occasions, at different times in her life, as early as her undergraduate years. In a phone interview conducted with CNN, she explained how she came to the title of her choreopoem: "I was driving the No. 1 Highway in northern California and I was overcome by the appearance of two parallel rainbows. I had a feeling of near death or near catastrophe. Then I drove through the rainbow and I went away. Then I put that together to form the title."[10] The colors of the rainbow then became the essence of the women in the choreopoem, named only their color pseudonyms.
Shange also explains that she chose to use the word "colored" in the title of her choreopoem so that her grandmother would be able to understand it.[7]"...
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1970s-1990s- Racialized examples of "I Like Coffee I Like Tea" ("Down Down Baby" Children's recreation rhymes
Here are two examples of those hand clap rhymes and my editor's notes:
1. Down, down baby
Down, down the roller coaster
Sweet, sweet baby
I'll never let you go
Chimey chimey cocoa pop
Chimey, chimey pow
Chimey, chimey cocoa pop
Chimey, chimey pop
I like coffee, I like tea
I like a colored boy and he likes me
So lets here the rhythm of the hands, (clap, clap) 2x
Let hear the rhythm of the feet (stomp, stomp) 2x
Let's hear the rhythm of the head (ding dong) 2x
Let's hear the rhythm of the hot dog
Let's hear the rhythm of the hot dog
Put em all together and what do you get
(Clap clap, stomp stomp), ding dong, hot Dog!
-Yasmin Hernadez; 2004; memories of New York City (Latinx/ African American neighborhood in the 1980s; cocojams.com [cocojams was the name of my cultural website that was active from 2001 to 2014).
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2. "I learned Version of Down Down Baby in virginia in the 90's
Down down baby, down by the rollercoaster
Sweet sweet baby, mama never let you go
Shimmy shimmy coca pop, shimmy shimmy pow!
I like coffee, I like tea,
I like a color boy and he likes me
So step back white boy, you don't shine
I'll get the color boy to beat yo' behind
Let get the rhythm of the hands (clap, clap)
We've got the rhythm of the hands (clap, clap)
Let's get the rhythm of the feet (stomp,stomp)
We've got the rhythm of the feet (stomp, stomp
Lets get the rhythm of the head DING-DONG
(move head side to side)
We've got the rhythm of the head DING-DONG (move head side to side)
Let's get the rhythm of the HOT-DOG
(move body around)
We've got the of the HOT-DOG
(move body around)
Put all together and and what do you get....
clap, clap, stomp, stomp, ding-dong, hot-dog
Say them all backwards and what do you get....
hot-dog, ding-dong, stomp, stomp, clap, clap!
-GUEST,Down Down baby, 30May 07, https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=63097 , Folklore: Do kids still do clapping rhymes?
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"Color" is a folk processed form of the racial referent "Colored"
Notes About The Racialized "I Like Coffee I Like Tea" Hand Clap Rhymes
by Azizi Powell, 2007
"Racialized rhymes" is my term for children's recreational rhymes that include racial referents when earlier versions of those rhymes didn't include any racial referents.
"Colored" is a referent for Black Americans that was retired at least by the 1970s and replaced by "Black" and/or "African American".The referent "Negro" was also retired for that same population and the referent "Afro-American" was used for a short time before it was replaced with "African American".
It's interesting that the no longer used referent "Colored" lives on in some examples of these racialized recreational rhymes from the 1980s and 1990s (and later?).
The early 1970s or mid 1970s" are the earliest dates that I've come across for these types of racialized "I Like Coffee I Like Tea" rhymes. That date come from an anonymous Guest who posted on Oct. 9. 2010 to a 2007 Mudcat discussion thread that I started entitled Down Down Baby-Race in Children's Rhymes: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=100653
That commenter wrote "Thank you so much for posting this!!! I went to an all black elementary school in Norfolk, VA in the early to mid 70's and we used the variation you described (shown below).
[quoting me] "The confrontational action in these verses follows a consistent pattern. First, these rhymes are almost always given from a female perspective {which makes sense since the person or persons reciting these rhymes are usually girls}. Secondly, in the rhyme, a Black {or "Colored"} girl rejects the advances of a White boy. Thirdly, the girl tells the White boy that she "likes a Black boy and he likes me". And fourthly {if there is such a word}, the girl threatens to get a Black {or "Colored"} boy to "beat his {the White boy's} behind"...
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That Guest also quotes me as saying that I hadn't come across any examples of this rhyme in which White people begin the confrontation (i.e "I like a White boy and he likes me, so step back Black boy etc.). However, since I wrote that comment in 2010 I have come across some examples like that (as given in #2 and #5 immediately below and as featured in this pancocojams post: https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2021/03/racialized-versions-of-i-like-coffee-i.html
That said, the "I like a black boy and he likes me" examples that I've come across appear to be much more widely chanted than any other "I like a [racial referent] boy and he likes me" version of these rhymes.
....Perhaps the changes in these rhymes [ i.e. the addition of racial referents] came about when schools were just being integrated. As such, the aggression and reference to race in these rhymes reflect the difficulties associated with those particular times. Perhaps times have changed and the interracial relations between students of different races have improved. Maybe the words to these rhymes have become so familiar and so ingrained that no changes have been made, or any changes that were suggested did not 'stick'."...
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1987-1990 - "Art, Untitled: A Close Look at "Untitled (Colored People Grid)" by Carrie Mae Weems
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Mar 18, 2021
...In this video Student Educator Lingran Zhang explores how the title of "Untitled (Colored People Grid)" by Carrie Mae Weems relates to the meaning of the artwork.
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1995- "Colored People: A Memoir" – by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Author), published April 11, 1995
https://www.amazon.com/Colored-People-Henry-Louis-Gates/dp/067973919X
"In a coming-of-age story as enchantingly vivid and ribald as anything Mark Twain or Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., recounts his childhood in the mill town of Piedmont, West Virginia, in the 1950s and 1960s and ushers readers into a gossip, of lye-and-mashed-potato “processes,” and of slyly stubborn resistance to the indignities of segregation.
A winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Award and the Lillian Smith Prize, Colored People is a pungent and poignant masterpiece of recollection, a work that extends and deepens our sense of African American history even as it entrances us with its bravura storytelling"
The Tony Awards, May 28, 2022
Black girl magic is reborn on Broadway in this fearlessly new, fiercely now reinvention of Ntozake Shange's iconic work. In this celebration of the power of Black womanhood, seven women share their stories and find strength in each other's humor and passion through a fusion of poetry, dance, music, and song that explodes off the stage and resonates with all.
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This concludes Part III of this pancocojams series.
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