Bantu

applied until recently to members of Bantu-speaking tribes.... Among linguists and anthropologists it is still in carefully controlled use but is otherwise taboo in most uses because of South African whites' use of it as an offensive name for black Africans (Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English). "Bantu" is still acceptable when referring to the group of more than 400 closely related languages in the Niger-Congo language family.