Most, alot of yall.are too young to Know or remember without the help of Google Howard Cosell 1983 Little Monkey Remark and the 1984 The football Mentality.
Comes from a day in time where it was hard to call a black man a black man without him getting offended . You could no longer call him a negro. A brownie. You could not call them anything without them getting offended. They wanted to identify as African American.one day and then something different the next.
Now days I guess there are entire HR departments giving lectures and dealing with this sorta thing internally on this on a daily/weekly basis in corporate America.