Exactly. I find it amazing that people get hung up on the imprecision associated with “AA” but don’t find any problem in calling Colin Powell, Barack Obama, Prince, or even Whitney Houston black.
“Black” oughta be a lot more confusing to those who interpret words literally. Most American blacks are not black at all; they are brown (and some of them are straight up yellow or even white-skinned).
My entire point is that I don’t think it’s a wonderfully precise and correct characterization. We’ll have to just not agree on this or something. I could list all my reasons, but you can read them above.
As for your other question, you have a good point, and the answer is that I’m not a big fan of “black”. It’s almost as bad as “white” in its literal applicability. But, if “white” is going to be used, and “Negro” somehow paints me as The Oppressive Man, then I’ll stick with “black” because I’m out of ideas, and so is apparently everyone else. Plus, as goofy as they are, at least white and black are complementary.
I guess I would argue that we shouldn’t use any blanket terminology for large groups of otherwise unrelated individuals. Maybe it’s because I’m not part of an oppressed minority, but I honestly think that people are individuals first, and if they want to participate in a culture, then that’s great, but forcing them to, no matter who it is, even if you are colored similarly, is unfair. You’re not “black” because you’re dark skinned, and you’re not “an Oreo” if you sound “white” and listen to Pink Floyd. You’re Jim, or Daris, or Ashley, or whatever your name is. I have a Greek friend whose mother will probably really cry if he gets engaged to a non-Greek woman, and I think that’s just ridiculous. He’s John, not The Greek Guy John.
What is with this obssession with “African American”?
It’s about as accurate as “White” is.
But the point some of us are trying to make here, in GQ fashion, is that it doesn’t matter what people want to be called. That’s a matter for GD. All we’re trying to determine is what the word means in the common parlance of the country. Like it or not, if you look like you trace a significant part of your ancestry to sub-Saharan Africa, you’re gonna be called an African-American in the US when someone wants to refer to your ethnicity. That is all. We can open a debate thread in GD if we want to discuss the rightness or wrongness of this fact, or what it’s implications are for the society as a whole. But as a purely linguistic matter, we have this term “African-American” and most people use it in a certain way. End of story.
Right. The biologist Richard Dawkins has this picture he shows to demonstrate what he considers the absurdity of racial classification. It’s this picture of Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, and Colin Powell all standing next to each other at some press conference. and you can see that even though Rumsfeld is considered “white”, and Rice and Powell are considered “black”, Powell actually has lighter skin than Rumsfeld.
When I saw the thread title, it reminded me of an African-American intellectual who had his DNA tested and found to his surprise that his ancestry is all American Indian and Hispanic, no African at all. Imagine being him and needing to rethink the whole ethnicity you’d been living in your entire life.
Then that reminded me of the Indian tribes here in Virginia, whose ancestry was denied them by state officials for years. They kept saying they were Indian, while the Man kept insisting they were really African-American and denied them any tribal status.
Right. It’s a compound word; it has a meaning different from its component parts, as do many (if not most) compound words. For instance, the fact that I turn my lights off at night doesn’t mean I sleep in a darkroom, even if I do sleep in a dark room.
So obviously there is no “inaccuracy” in using the term “African-American” to mean something other than the literal meanings of the words that compose it.
Caribbean society is not the same as American society. The particular circumstances of blacks living in the United States led to the development of a particular culture, and telling African-Americans that they ought to pretend their particular culture doesn’t exist in the name of “racial harmony” is a terrible idea.
Really? What makes the term mean that and not what the dictionary says? Because parallel terms like “European-American” (to the extent that anyone uses it) and “Asian-American” (which is in fairly common use) don’t mean anything of the sort. Also, I challenge you to find any uses of “African-American” to mean what you claim it does. Further, the general compound [Origin]-American is not used in any other circumstances to refer only to people who hold dual citizenship.
So tell me, Clothahump, why does African-American have a meaning so clearly at variance with the meaning of every analogous term? Why isn’t its actual meaning written into dictionaries? Why isn’t its actual meaning used in public discourse?
One wonders if, instead of actually trying to address the question, you’re instead sharing ideologically-motivated lies. Certainly what you’ve claimed is untrue - as has already been amply demonstrated in this thread; whether you’re a liar or not depends on whether your claims come from some very fundamental confusion over the term or whether you’re deliberately telling falsehoods.
Precisely.
Look, I’ve heard all of this explanation. I’ll think about it, but at the moment I’m just not convinced. It’s made up from whole cloth, to mean something you’d never guess from the components, and has all kinds of implications that I don’t like from those components. Maybe I should just stop coming back to this thread and we should let it die.
Except I have to point out in no uncertain terms that I never said anything like that. Their culture doesn’t exist? I did not and will not say that, and I’m shocked that you got that from anything I said. Don’t bother going back and picking through to show me where I supposedly implied it, I hereby denounce any bad phrasing I may have used.
Not quite all.
If you trace your immediate ancestry to whatever enclave outside the U.S. black mainstream, you’re probably gonna continue to call yourself by that group designation. There’s still the little matter of self-identification. Most black expatriates don’t want to be called African-Americans. “Black” is fine.
Plus, if Political Correctness has taught us anything, it’s that it’s rude as shit to insist on calling a people by a name they reject, be it racial slurs or polite ethnic nomenclature. Thus it’s American Indians, not Native Americans. It’s Little People, not dwarves or midgets. It’s Muslims, not Islamists or Mohammadens. It’s Asian, or maybe Pacific Islanders, not Orientals. The Gullah communities off the Sea Islands are African-Americans, too, and lots of them reject the term “African-American”; their patios, foods, arts, cultural traditions are different from mainland black Americans. Same for the Katrina scattered Louisiana Creole.
Plus I’ll go one better: if black expatriates become U.S. citizens, even if they’ve been here for generations, most still don’t want to be called African- Americans. They won’t forget their country of origin as much as Americans who champion assimulation want us to. America isn’t a melting pot. We’re an ethnic stew.
Really, it’s not the other way around? I would think they would not want to be called “Indians” since that was based on the ignorance of white explorers thinking they had landed in India.
In Canada the term “Indian” for native/first-nations people is pretty much gone, other than in racial slurs. I always find it a bit jarring to hear people refer to “Indians” on American TV.
… I may have overstated it a bit, but my understanding is “Indian” is preferred to “Native American.” Mostly, if I’m hearing this right, because militant Indians reject it so they can stick to the white man for trying to come up with another name to foist on them without their consent.
OKFMDOA, I kind of would have thought so too, and I admit freely that “Indian” is a giant WHOOPS on Columbus’ part (or so I’ve been told). Maybe it’s saved by saying “American Indian”.
Anyway, one of the most militant American Indian movements is the American Indian Movement: American Indian Movement - Wikipedia
Btw, does anyone have a cite for the survey I heard of that says that the bulk of American Indians don’t really care about the sports teams names. I’m told that again, it’s the people who want the most change who make the most noise. There often is a silent majority, even if Nixon was wacky in thinking he’d found one on his military policies.
Saying I can’t think of a good term so I’m going to deny the use of everybody else’s term is not an intellectual position I’d care to defend.
We can’t simply agree to disagree because you’re factually wrong on this. You’ve said:
This is equivalent to saying that you can’t use the term Asian (not even Asian American but just plain Asian) because it would include people from Turkey. This is indefensible as a matter of English. Using either Asian or African-American is an example of synecdoche:
Synecdoche is as common as dirt in English. It usage is not only legitimate but indispensable.
And African-American is no more made up from whole cloth than Negro is. Saying that it is betrays a lack of understanding of linguistics, as well as the entire history of the English language.
Commenting on this is better suited for other forums, but this wish is factually contrary to the reality of every facet of human civilization and human history. You cannot seriously deny its overwhelming presence in every single factor of daily life and human interaction everywhere on the planet.
Even presciptionists have to acknowledge that English usage is eventually decided by common speech and the writings of good authors. We’re disagreeing with you on this because you are linguistically wrong on every aspect of how the language works.
[QUOTE=tomndebb He did not, however, make that specific link clear; he also failed to note that there are sections of the country where “hyphenated-American” is a rarely used term, making the term a bit confusing to places where it was introduced as a neologism.[/quote]
Yet Tom, we as a nation seem to have little problem with Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans or any other 'hyphenated-Amerians", even in those sections where the term is rarly used. Why the hard-on for black folk?
What percentage of threads have we had asking this question or a variation of it concerning African-Americans vs any other hyphenated-Americans? Do you think our Italian or Irish or German or Chinese American members would appreiciate being told over and over again how PC is is to acknowledge their ethnic background, considering many of them are as far away removed from their homeland as the decendents of African slaves are?
Now maybe it’s because I’m New Yorker, but this constant mantra concerning this issue is incredibly strange to me. It just is.
The problem is Tom, this country is a mess concerning black people. What i mean by that is the we have centuries of screw ups to deal with and that’s made even more difficult because you have generations of folks with different expectations and terms.
Secondly, one of the problems with being part of a minority group that’s historically been told that your ‘group’ has done nothing to contribute to society or are worthless, is the habit of grabbing anyone that remotely resembles you and claiming them for your own. Hence people who shouldn’t technically being African-American are claimed, because they are black and unfortunately we has a nation are unable or don’t care to see the difference. And as noted, it’s sometimes easier or to one’s advantage to be considered part of a group that has some clout.
For me, the term refers to anyone regardless of their skin color, who’s decendant from the African Slaves brought to America. Now if Ms, Theron decided to call herself an African-American, I wouldn’t care anymore than I would care if a “black” person who was born and bred in Ireland called himself an Irish-American.
Color doesn’t matter. Culture does and I doubt Ms. Theron like most immigrants would drop her country of origin and chose to use a generic one; like African-Americans have to.
I think I really have to just let this thread go. Where in God’s name did I tell people to quit using it? I don’t care for it. Jeeez.
And I don’t use Asian in that sense, if I remember at the time. I try to get very specific. Have you made the mistake of asking a Korean if they speak Chinese? I have. Bad idea.
I can’t see that Negro is as made up, because it was an attempt to do the same thing “black” does. Why it it was “more distinguished” at the time I’m not sure. I’m happy to use it if asked, but I’m not. Plus, I never compared the “whole cloth-ness” of the two words anyway.
[quote]
Commenting on this is better suited for other forums, but this wish is factually contrary to the reality of every facet of human civilization and human history. You cannot seriously deny its overwhelming presence in every single factor of daily life and human interaction everywhere on the planet.
[quote]
I’m honestly not sure I understand you. I’m having a pipe dream that people would treat people as individuals and not as cogs in the culture that they had no part in being born into? (That may be an exaggeration or misrepresentation of your point. See how I admit that?) I’m fine with doing something that’s not going to spread around the world. I have many things like that. Being a giant nerd as a kid has prepared me for going it alone. Anyway, about the cogs, I don’t do it. I make a point not to assume that people listen to certain things, like certain things, etc, until I find out that they do. I might ask if they like them, but I’ve been enough of a dork with things like that to have it burned out of me.
I may have been a bit confusing on this point. I have already written how I fully admit the word means what people think it means (mostly, at least). Since AA means black to absolutely everyone I have ever met until yesterday, reading Askia, I have to make a decision about whether I want to use that term to mean that thing. No, I don’t. I never would have thought that explaining a personal choice in perfectly acceptable nomenclature would almost get me burned at the stake. Only on the Dope.
Perhaps you haven’t, and I misinterpreted that sentence. I will certainly agree that you did not explicitly say so. Nevertheless, people do say such things all the time, and I have a strong antipathy for arguments to the effect of “Hey, we’re all people, why do we have to notice such differences?” Such arguments pollyannishly pretend that worrying about nomenclature for ethnic groups is unnecessary or divisive; they essentially boil down to asking people to pretend that different groups don’t exist in hopes that they will somehow magically disappear if those people will please stop talking about it.
Again, if you don’t subscribe to such a view, then I’m sorry for imputing it to you. But lots of people do, and it’s something of a perennial feature of these discussions to have some mush-minded idiot telling the rest of us to stop talking about these issues in hopes that they will simply vanish if we pretend they don’t exist.
I would recommend you not do that again.
Somehow, over the years, I have managed to both use the term “Asian” to describe people of East Asian descent and never made the mistake of assuming that every East Asian person I see is Chinese.
No one has explained how “AA” is PC, anyway. Most every black person I know has absolutely no problem with being called black. They don’t object to being called “AA” but its not something most black people state as their preference. It’s just a freakin’ term. When we hear it, we know exactly what’s being communicated. Of all the things to call inaccurate with respect to black folk terminology, AA ain’t it.
The only people who I see using AA on a constant basis are white people. Ironically, the only people I see complaining about AA are also white. This whole little self-imposed turmoil would be amusing if it wasn’t so intellectually frustrating to understand and untangle.
I’m from the South and it’s just as strange to me. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to call this topic an obsession, at this point.
In common parlance, AA = black American. The OP asks if there are any AA’s that aren’t black, and the answer is no. By definition, they are black. Of course, we still haven’t defined black, right? To answer the OP fully, we’d have to do that. That’s a whole other kettle of catfish, though. No one seems to have bothered to address it.
I agree with this. Most descendants of American slaves accept being called AAs because the only thing that most of us know is that are ancestors came from Africa. We know little about our roots concerning tribes and nationalities, as other ethnic groups do. Blacks from other countries will probably identify with their home country before they identify with a whole continent. So although the sportscaster will call all blacks (even those who ain’t even American) African American, most people who have close contact with black immigants will describe them using the most obvious, meaningful terms. “My friend Jeanne is a Haitian-American and speaks French.”
Only by someone who A) assumes you are descendant of American slaves or B) doesn’t care enough to parse your specific ethnic identity out of a more generic classification.
I meant to attribute that last quote to John Mace.
Underscoring my earlier point, here’s an article describing “Little Ethiopia” in DC and how some (mostly, older) African-American residents and community leaders in Shaw feel threatened by first-and-second generation Ethiopian immigrants’ wanting to carve their own neighborhood and separate ethnic identity away from African-Americans.
Huh? If I’m understanding you correctly, you feel there is a need for a different term for black people who are descendants of slaves from black people who are not? Sorry, but that makes zero sense to me. It’s like saying that people whose great grandparents were farmers should have a different label than people whose great grandparents were townspeople. I’m sure Barak Obama did not avoid the difficulties of growing up black in America just because his ancestors had been slaves.
Unless I missed the announcement, nobody died and put you in charge of the English language. Charlize Theron is indeed an African-American by a reasonable definition of the term. You may not agree with that definition but that doesn’t make you right and the definition wrong.
My intent was to point out that the common general meaning of the term African-American leaves out some people who would be defined by that term by any reasonable standard. If Ms Theron isn’t an African-American, what is she?
And I managed to invoke this concept using only three words. So I’m quite clever indeed.