Monica "The other thing to remember [is] that the impetus to 'clean' up the language comes from the USA and many of their words and phrases may sound like ours but have a completely different origin." As are some of the assumptions about the interactions of white and black people. In the USA, a black person was probably a slave, the property of a white owner, living in a ghetto of separate quarters to white people, working all day in the fields and subject to the owner's whim for his/her day-to-day life, sexual and family life, and indeed for life itself. In the UK, one example could be an ex-seaman, (possibly press-ganged, possibly joined a ship voluntarily) who had left the ship in a seaport and worked at some other trade, as a free man under the same conditions as the white workers, living in whatever accommodation he could find and afford. As an incomer with a different appearance from most people he would attract attention, some of it automatically hostile to all strangers (during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, the population of Hartlepool were ignorant and xenophobic enough to have hanged as a French spy a shipwrecked monkey which was wandering round the town) but they were not the large, well-known and universally recognised underclass that they were in the US.
Black and white, good and bad - Only some black things are negative. Some are positive. Some white things are negative.
A "little black dress" is positive - very elegant and sexy.. Blackcurrants and blackberries are delicious.
A blackboard is (or was) a useful and universal teaching aid.
Black pudding isn't a sinful food.
Ghosts are white. So is fog (whiteish).
White hair isn't superior to any other colour of hair.
White Van Man isn't our favourite driver.
Whiteheads are nasty little spots, not superior in any way to blackheads.
And a blue-eyed boy isn't anything admirable. He has gained the position of boss's favourite by being a yes-man and dishing the dirt on rest of the employees, and is hated by everyone else.