Good point, Mjollnir. If you go back far enough, you’ll find your ancestors were from somewhere else. I think I’m going to start referring to myself as a “Gondwannalandian-American.”
My vote re: the OP: in every (other) context I have ever heard or read it used, “African-American” was used to mean “a Negroid person” (to use another old, oft-misused, oft-negatively-connoted word). That is, “black.”
While it is logical to apply the term “African-American” to American descendants of white (including Arab) Africans…since when has logic applied to sterotyping? Except above, I have never encountered the term used in that fashion, and I rather suspect The Average Man would have some choice words for the intellectual (admit it!) who tried to use the term that way. (Which isn’t to say it’s a “wrong” usage. Just unheard of in my experience.)
VileOrb: it seems on the surface that “hate” is a pretty strong reaction to (what seems to me) a pretty innocuous preference on some people’s part. What has happened surrounding the “Oriental to Asian” issue to generate such a visceral reaction for you? Or is that largely a figure of speech, meaning basically “annoyed to have to worry about it?”
The subject did come up briefly in another thread (about “Japanese Dwarf figurines”) and the consensus among self-described Asians was that the word “oriental” has negative connotations. I’d hardly blame anyone for wanting to avoid pejorative meanings attached to an old word as now used with reference to themselves - and even if you or I don’t intend pejorative meaning, if it’s there it’s there, and liable to be heard by third parties or the listener. They did agree that “Asian” was ambiguous and usually preferred something more geographically specific, like “Southeast Asian.”
My own opinion: we’re all just Americans. Either that, or you can start calling us honkies European-Americans or English/German/etc.-Americans, too. (Yeah, that’ll fly!)
‘Hyphenating’ some groups’ name to reference cultural origins is now often source of pride through cultural identification (Irish-Americans; Italian-Americans), but how about at the beginning? Originally, those and other European-originated groups were “less-desirable” and discriminated against. Did the majority culture use those distinctions as a way (as it sometimes seems to be now) of drawing a line between “just plain folks” - “you know, Americans” - and “Them, you know, those different people over there?” Anyone have some data on how the practice got started?
(And just in case anyone doubts the subtle power of sub-typing “Americans” - or of word connotations in general - I refer you to the example of the World War II internment camps. “Imprisonment of Americans” has a different emotional impact than does “Imprisonment of Japanese-Americans.” Constantly referring to the internees as Japanese-Americans seems to drain power from the issue; the focus seems to go to that group’s links to Our Enemy rather than to, say, the Constitutionality of the issue. I doubt the same would be true if we tried to imprison, say, all Tennessee-Americans.
And I don’t mean to hijack the thread. I do think the above example indirectly speaks to the larger issue (multiculturalism) referenced in the OP. Perceived meanings attached to words can matter to people because sometimes they make a real-life difference - whether intended or not. To the extent that “African-American” is an attempt to avoid the pejorative images surrounding “black” and “colored” I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to make or be subject to such inferences. I also think the attempt is bound to fail, until such a time as everyone uses an inclusive term rather than a distinguishing term.)
I use the term “black” and “African-American” interchangably. The terms hold equal weight for me, although when refering to the African Diaspora I will use the term “black”, since in that case i’m not just referring to black people in America.
-MrSCOTT
Merriam Webster’s definition is as good as any, in my opinion:
Main Entry: Af·ro-Amer·i·can
Pronunciation: "a-frO-&-'mer-&-k&n
Function: noun
Date: 1853
: an American of African and especially of black African descent
- Afro-American adjective
I hear “African-American” and I assume the person is talking about a black man.
I say “African-American” and I mean a person from Africa who has since moved to the United States.
“I’m not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.”-- Calvin and Hobbes
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I think Guy Propski nailed it for the definition, as per my mind anyway.
But why stop at Gondwanaland (Reunite Gondwanaland!)? Can I be a Primotdial Soup American?
Ah…, why screw areound. I’ll thank you all to henceforth refer to me as a Big Bang American.
Actually, it’s the hyphenated “-American” part that seems out of place to me. My 2nd to 4th generation American friends and colleagues of Irish descent refer to themselves as “Irish”; those originally from Italy as “Italian”. Minnesota folks refer to the blonde families next door as Swedish although they’ve never been out of the US.
Miguel is Mexican, although he is not **a ** Mexican, he wasn’t born in Mexico and doesn’t live there, but he’s Mexican, you dig? Me, I’m Scottish. Never set foot on any of the British Isles, though.
So, of course, they are African. If their national citizenship is an issue, I’ll refer to them as Americans, but ethnically they’re Africans.
Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post
I dunno. I call black people “black”. Black people call me and other people who look more or less like me “white”. This system seems to work. I vote we stick with it. From what I’ve read, black people were called (by both whites and blacks) “colored” up until the late '60s, when “black” took over as the preferred term. “Negro” was also widely used, especially in sociological or journalistic contexts. Interestingly, it was always capitalized. I imagine that “Negro” disappeared because of its similarity with “nigger”.
I don’t much like “African-American” because of the possible confusion between autotochonous American blacks and African immigrants to America, and also because it takes six syllables to say instead of one.
If I notice that everyone else is using “African-American”, then I’ll start doing it, too. Until then, I’ll keep using “black”.
Is there anything wrong with referring to a black or African American person as “brown”? I read where Avery Brooks (the guy who played Captain Sisko on DS9) used it in an interview. If not, that would make me “pink”, which I regard as better than “white” (I’ve only known one white person - my albino ex-boyfriend - and he was from Pakistan!) and “Caucasian” (which is inaccurate since my racial heritage is both mixed and not from anywhere near the Caucasus).
To answer the OP, I’d say a citizen of the US of a noticeable degree of, or claimed affinity to, some Negroid ancestry, whether born here, in Africa or elsewhere.
My generalization as to all the discussion here is that there are no reasonably satisfactory names for the human races or mixtures thereof and probably there never will be. More specifically I state the following as to individual posts here.
Satan:
I believe that whether ‘African American’ or ‘black’ is “politically correct” depends on the educational or economic class of the person named. Of course, as expressed by those of such ethnicity, the taboo N-word is even preferred by some of same, though I think some of this usage accompanies self-deprecation.
AWB:
I would say that any of your cousins presently citizens of Congo are American-Congolese, and any that are citizens of the US are simply Americans.
Mullinator:
Yes, and I’d say many black Jamaican citizens in the US get improperly called African Americans also, rather than (African) Jamaicans.
Keeves:
I would agree with WIGGUM that you’re getting to elaborate in your post. In forms for technical or other specific purposes, more specific designations might be needed. In some medical situations, one might need to designate more than one genetic derivation, such as Negroid, Semitic/Mediterranean, etc., in order to accommodate disease/disorder susceptibility.
Keeves:
Often people are forced to make such racial categorizations by the very objects of such categorization.
VileOrb:
What does “colored” mean. Everyone’s colored with some color, except minimally in the case of albinos of any race. And I think the term ‘people of color’ is disgusting. We’re now going to set up all persons predominantly non-Caucasian against all those predominantly Caucasian, even though Mongoloids are more similar to Caucasians than Negroids or Amerinds?
I don’t think one ought to group those who prefer to be called ‘African American’ rather than ‘black’ as “pretentious”. I think they’d just rather be categorized as a variety of human being not based on color. This seems quite reasonable to me, although ‘black’ is quicker to say, because it’s always seemed to me that people, white or black or whatever, view “blacks” not, on the most significant level, according to their color – but rather on the basis of a certain range of behavioral generalizations and maybe certain feature shapes, whether these be regarded as positive or negative. After all, some Asian Indians / South Asians / East Indians / brown Caucasians (or whatever you call them) are darker than some “blacks” exhibiting such Negroid feature shapes or behaviors.
Yes, I find the substitution today of ‘asian’ for ‘oriental’ to be annoying, because, well, natives of India are Asians, as are Caucasians, all derivationally and most Semites contemporaneously, and also Caucasoid Central Asians, and less Mongoloid SE Asians and maybe the various sorts from the East Indies.
Tom:
I think many college-educated “blacks” feel that designation for them is less than appropriate. You might say that some are physically whiter than those who prefer to be called ‘blacks’, but I think the idea in the main is to get away from something so simply physically constraining as a color, in the context of other ethnic names, such as American, European, Asia, etc. After all, ‘yellow’ is not considered acceptable in the US at present for designating Mongoloid Americans, as far as I know; though I consider the current acceptability of ‘black’ for Negroid Americans as a consequence of the past or present preference of a significant portion of that latter group.
Beruang:
Your Asian friends came over here to live with the “White Devil”?
cher3:
Well, I don’t think, given an historic view of the world as extending throughout Eurasia, that ‘east’ is all so egotisticallly Eurocentric; there isn’t a lot east of Japan for quite a ways, nor west of the British Isle, and the cultural terms ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ (Orietal and Occidental) will never go away.
‘Hispanic’ isn’t consistent with anything. It used to mean ‘Spanish or Portuguese’. Now, it appears to mean those or some mix of Amerind with them, or just ‘having a Spanish (or Portuguese (?)) surname’(whether of Visigothic, Moorish, Gypsy or any Amerind ancestry).
And I thought ‘brown’ used to refer to Polynesians, Melanesians and maybe South Asians.
Diceman:
In re ‘African American’, see my comments under VileOrb and Tom.
Mjollnir:
Yes, and all Caucasians are also Asians, right, because the Caucasus is in Asia?
{:-Df (How does one pronounce that?):
Since the brain was designed. . .er. . .evolved. The brain (neural nets) doesn’t know any other kind of logic.
I haven’t discussed such things with any Asians, but while ‘Southeast Asian’ may be fine for those having ancestry in that region, what would’ve been considered as more specific for Chinese, Koreans and Japanese? I’ve sort of wondered how the latter have felt about being classed with other “Asians” who have had a much shorter span of a civilized condition, such as Southeast Asians, and particularly, say, Filipinos, and on into other islands if they figure into “Asian”. I wouldn’t expect them to be appreciative of that particularly.
You ask how the designations Irish-American and Italian-American got started. I think they got started in NYC, when they got off the boat and found that they didn’t like each other. More recently, in CA-US, there was an Italian-American woman who wanted the environmental license plate “DAGO”, but the CA DMV wouldn’t give it to here. As I recall, after she managed to get them to relent, the local Italian-American group nixed it. Just can’t satisfy all those I-As at the same time, I guess. Maybe it makes a difference whether you’re ancesters came from southern or northern Italy.
Yes, I recall, growing in Salinas, CA, my family being quite friendly with a Japanese-American family the father within which had to lose his pharmacy business, and all of them be interned in first Utah and then Arizona. My brother corresponded with their boy of his age for some time afterwards. I recall playing with them while at the same time having a racially stylized picture on my wall of the “enemy”. The Pacific Theater of that war was very racial from the points of view of both sides.
Nickrz:
Nobody uses the term ‘Afro-American’ anymore. . .except maybe for that hairdo seen in old pictures from back then. OK, so maybe they also use it as to cultural imports from Africa to the US, as in ‘Afro-American music’.
beatle:
So you hail from one of our pre-Jurassic tribes, do you? Bet it was your ancestors who did in all those dinosaurs. You should be ashamed! We should throw you back into the primordial soup and see if something better might rearrange itself. As I understand it, they’re even trying to come out with an upgraded version of that there Big Bang thang.
AHunter3:
Yeah, well, as discussed in an earlier thread, that ‘American’ label is a real problem in and of itself. Wasn’t Vespucci some kind of Italian? Doesn’t that make all of us some kind of Italian? And, hey, since Mexico is in America (even North America), your friend, Miguel must be American American, right?
And if the African Americans you know are descendants only of long-time Jamaicans, are they still “Africans” in your lingo?
Lawrence:
Black Americans weren’t called ‘colored’ very often in the North of the US prior to the late '60s; they were called ‘Negro’, although, of course, the taboo N-
Actually, they’re in Europe.
BTW, I have no idea how your response related to my post.
Have a nice day!
Ray, my Bay Area homie, at the risk of being accused of conspiring with you to hijack this thread (actually, we’re imparting the multi-cultural wisdom acquired from living in one of the most culturally-diverse areas of the country, yeah, that’s it):
It is to be hoped (that is, “hopefully”): “Friend.”
Okay, can’t argue that. Whatimeantwas, “Since when has nonintuitive (my opinion), learned, “Socratic” logic applied to stereotyping?” Smart guy.
In my own experience with Chinese immigrants I find that:
- With regards to Asians (literally) they generally use the nationality as descriptor - in Mandarin or English. Exceptions: for other Chinese, they often break it down to the province or city of origin, or (rarely) say “Han-folk” (the majority culture); the word used for India sounds like Hindu, and probably derived from that religion, but is applied to most/all Indians.
With regards to ‘European-Americans’ they say (in Mandarin) “foreigner” or “American” or “white-folk” or (in English) they say “Americans.” ‘African-Americans’ seem always to be referred to as (M.) “black-folk” or (E.) “blacks.”
2) Except with regard to such ‘incidents’ as the Indonesian riots and rapes, or WW II, they’re not too annoyed but are rather a tiny bit superior, conveying the impression that all ‘East Asians’ are Chinese, ultimately. (China being the fount and the center, etc.) CAVEAT: That is probably more true among Taiwanese than among Mainlanders (who seem a bit more insular in their cultural identification).
With regard to 2) and Japanese persons, I daresay your suspicion may be close to the mark. Those few I’ve known certainly deny the strong Chinese influence in their traditional culture. (I don’t know if they think they’ve been civilized longer than the Chinese, but I think they feel that way towards other East Asians including Koreans.) But ultimately, my sample is too small for me to be overly confident in my opinion.
Returning to the OP: WIGGUM, when all is said and done, let us know the results accumulated by - or conclusions of - your class.
Apparently you’re correct that the Caucasus Mountains/Region are/is, by convention, in Europe, although the same convention places Turkey in Asia. (When and how was this arrangement decided? I’m even less of an historian than a geographer.) Of course, I’m not clear on how human genomic differences learned of this arrangement and figured accordingly.
You had earlier posed:
Thinking of the Caucasus as in Asia, and assuming there to be some justification in naming and associating Caucasians with that region, it appeared to me that this statement of mine was, in a more restricted way, parallel to yours, i.e., as to pointing up ambiguity in a racial categorization.
Should I not assume it was Europeans that decided the Caucasus was in Europe? As a Caucasian, could I not’ve considered myself origionally Asian if Asians had managed better to control the biases of geographers, so as to establish the Caucasus as a part of Asia – perhaps trading it for Turkey, which, of its own volition, eventually adopted a European alphabet? And are not Turks through at least Bangladeshians Asian Caucasians? My day was nice, but the fog did roll in. How was yours?
Ray
Acorn-headed laughing friend 
:
I dunno, I turned my stereotypewriter in when I got my computer. I did tend to miss gazing at that three-dimensional typeface though.
Ray (can’t tell Mandarin from Cantonese; can understand Ebonics though, creo que sí )
Wiggum: you didn’t really think you’d be able to raise this topic without getting into all the related issues, didja? As for me, African-American means a black person who is trying to overcome the negative racial stereotyping and who has a desire to be identified with their “own” culture – even with the northern Africa Egyptian culture. Many blacks, including black historians, claim they descend from the ancient Egyptians (with which I do not agree). I have a problem with all the hyphenated American designations as I think that practice simply encourages stereotyping and reinforces biases. For me, the African-American label conjures up a negative reaction – when I think of Africa, I think of the poverty and horrendously violent civil wars that include the godawful mass killings of innocents. Admittedly, this may be due in part to the focus of the media, but whatever positive things are going on there, we don’t hear about them. Another label I don’t like - Native American to designate the American Indian. A native of any country is someone who was born there. I am white. I was born in America, ergo I am a native American.
Sycorax: I agree with most of your post but, if anything, I don’t think the media pays enough attention to the problems in Africa. Take the situation in Rwanda. This makes the Serbians’ so-called genocide look like a barroom brawl, but we have heard almost nothing about it. Why hasn’t the UN lead a massive, US-lead army --I mean, peacekeeping force ;)-- into Rwanda?
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island
i don’t call people “African-American”; or “Asian” ; or whatever.
I call them my neighbors. 
YO-HO, ME HEARTIES! ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR THE MUSICAL BATTLE AT SEA!
Dice - Rwanda isn’t the only country immersed in civil war on that continent – what do we do - send UN troops to every country embroiled in civil strife? Provide food for all the starving? I’m not an isolationist, but how far do we go in expending our (and other countries’) troops and other resources to help other countries. Not to mention,we can’t just unilaterally decide to go in and save them from themselves. Has there been a world-wide outcry to do so, or requests from those countries to help? As you say, perhaps more media attention is needed to understand what’s going on there and how the rest of the world can help.
Beruang:
Your Asian friends came over here to live with the “White Devil”?
================================
Nanobyte –
They came here to learn our filthy western ways, and steal our precious bodily fluids.
– Beruang
P.S. My Indonesian girlfriend read this thread, and now calls herself a “Brown-American.” Thanks a lot, guys!
And let’s not forget the other euphemisms for “Black.”
“Urban” and “civil rights.”
By the way, Nanobyte, I’m LOL over “How was your day?”
Guess you’ve seen my “Boot” post in MPSIMS.
And I thought you were referring to my other post. That was the source of my confusoin.