I'm of Nigerian descent and I do notice that "black" and "dark" is usually used in the negative. But I know that's not based in racism.

The concept of dark/black being scary I'm confident pre-dates any racism towards african americans.

Also, there are a few things where black is used as positive.

- Finance; If you're "in the black", you're flushed with cash. There's some kinda dark irony here. ;)

- Rich people tend to wear expensive black clothes, expensive black cars... etc. Black is always in fashion and a symbol of wealth... which somehow, again, is ironic. ;)

Light/dark being good/bad in the European sense stems from good things being light and bad things being dark. Fire is good - it keeps you warm and cooks your food. The soot and char left over from the fire is bad, relatively useless. The day is good - it's when you're out and about, able to see and do things, and it's warm. The night is bad, you can't do much, it's hard to see and get stuff done. Criminals do their deeds in the shadows, where they're hard to see, as opposed to morally righteous actions, which are easily performed in the full view of day. Certainly in the christian theology that shaped Europe, dark refers to shadowy nefariousness, and not dark-skinned humans.

The black finance thing is rather simple - in bookkeeping, a positive total is written in normal ink, which is (usually) black. A negative total is written in red ink, to make it stand out. Being in the black just means you're not making a loss, though when used colloquially, as you say, it means you are flush with cash.

In China, white is the color of death. A dead body.and a ghost are pale.

Red is the color of life, of hearty blush in skin.

Here is a clip for a classic hip hop song by 3rd Bass that is relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYp28tEAVvs&t=1m58s.

The verse starts: "Black cat is bad luck, bad guys wear black. Musta been a white guy who started all that."

Interestingly, the MC in question here is white-skinned. I think he's Jewish, but I might be wrong.

From the perspective of an African immigrant, I would imagine that it is easy to see discrimination everywhere. I think your friend is annoyed that the idea of "blackness being inferior" is omnipresent (from his perspective). It's even built in to the very way we speak.

I think that what your immigrant friend really wants is just to feel like he has the same shot a person with white skin does. He's kvetching about words because racism is on his mind a lot, but he's not expecting you or anyone to rewrite the English language. He probably just gets treated poorly on a regular basis because of his race, and he wants that to stop.

You (We) could likely cure his annoyances while stopping short of major linguistic changes.

Seems obvious to me that black has negative connotations for all the things it's directly associated with due to the physical fact it's the absence of light. Darkness, death, etc. Humans are hard-wired to fear these things because without light we can't see and if we can't see we can't avoid danger, etc.

If the US did not have such enormous racial issues, I suspect that wouldn't be such a big deal. So if we don't want black people to be bothered by that, we could start with, say, eliminating the enormous amount of racial imbalance here.

On the one hand, it seems clear that the cultural association of darkness as bad has nothing do to with racism. But does anyone know if cultures whose people have dark skin do not have the same connotations?