Are all African Americans really African?

Factual Questions
81

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
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.

[/QUOTE]

If Cardinal is wrong on the way English works, you are being deliberately obtuse. There is no reasonable definition of the term African-American that includes Charlize Theron. Why? African-Americans are reasonably defined the way I laid it out earlier: one who is an immigrant or the descendants of immigrants from one of the native tribes of sub-Saharan Africa.

Immigrants or the descendants of immigrants from the white colonialist subjugators of one of the native tribes of sub-Saharan Africa are not included in any definition of African-American. There is no common usage of that sense of the term; no good author would write it. It can only be used in a deliberately derogatory and mocking sense. That makes it wrong as a reasonable definition of the term.

I didn’t decide that. That’s the way - the only way - the English language works.

82

A person who’s born and raised in Africa and then emigrates to America fits no reasonable definition of the term African-American? And I’m the one that’s being deliberately obtuse?

83

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
A person who’s born and raised in Africa and then emigrates to America fits no reasonable definition of the term African-American?
[/QUOTE]
Correct. Charlize Theron is a South African-American (provided she has naturalized–a point I never see raised). Had Barak Obama’s father stayed to become a citizen, he would have been a Kenyan-American.

The standard “hyphenated-American” nomenclature uses the nation of origin linked to the adjective American. The point of using the continent of Africa in the term African-American is that the peoples brought here in slavery were taken from places that were, typically, not nation-states in the manner we now recognize them and that the process of “breaking” imposed on newly captured slaves was intended to remove most associations of the new slaves from their places of origin. By using the continent instead of a nation, we recognize that their history differs from that of a recent immigrant.

84

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
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?
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I’m saying there are already pre-existing ethnic terms for black people in different cultures. When they all come here, that move doesn’t make them “African-Americans.”

Sorry. I’ll type louder. THAT BETTER?

EXACTLY. Simply moving to a farm if you grew up in family of townspeople a doesn’t give you the right to claim the heritage of families of farmers. Ask Oliver Wendell Douglass how that went.

Exactly. He grew up black. He grew up in America. But his heritage is Kenyan and American. His ancestors were not descended from black African American slaves.

Don’t look at me for proof. I shredded the memo.

Charlize Theron is an African-American only by a literal definition of the term. Read this Saturday Night Live transcript where the “Charlize Theron is African-American!” joke was born.

A white, naturalized American originally from South Africa. I presume. Whatever she is, that chick ain’t African-American.

Well, as Mr. Wolf once said, “Let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks just yet…”

85

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
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.
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I know little about Barack Obama’s childhood, and I don’t know whether it is the norm for U.S.-born children of African immigrants to share in the quote-unquote “Black Experience”. But at very least, you seem to have missed a major point that Askia has argued rather eloquently and that I touched on as well: there is a unique culture amongst “African-Americans” (in Askia’s use of the term) that is likely different than that of Barack Obama. Skin color doesn’t mean all that much; it’s a proxy for many other, much more complicated phenomena, and black people in the United States have a certain identity unique to them.

Oh, dear. Yes, the announcement was made last Thursday; I’m not sure how you missed it, but it was in all the papers. :slight_smile:

No, she’s not. There is no reasonable definition of the term that departs so sharply from what it’s actually used for. “African-American” does have a specific meaning, and it definitely excludes white people. That has been explained to you already; unless you’re willing to attempt to refute some argument, you’re just making a bald assertion here, much like Clothahump did earlier.

I have some sympathy for Askia’s use of the term - largely because that’s how I use it myself and I have always felt a certain discomfort with its use to describe just any black person in the United States. But I’m willing to accept that popular usage most likely is to use it to refer to black African immigrants and their offspring; however, conventional usage certainly is limited to black people. Conventional, that is, outside of this precise argument, which itself is becoming sadly conventional - but none the more convincing for it.

But the fact that that is not the definition in any kind of use outside of stunts played by schoolchildren does make it wrong.

You may not agree with that, but it’s still true.

Precisely what is that reasonable standard? It is only “reasonable” either by fallacious attempts to make analogies to other compound ethnonyms like the ridiculous one advanced above by Clothahump and subsequently thoroughly demolished, or under the similarly fallacious (though less deliberately deceitful) reasoning based on the idea that a compound word must always mean exactly the combination of its component parts, a line of reasoning that I have already disproven.

You’re simply sitting here and making claims with no support to back them; those claims, worse yet, have already been addressed. Without some novel line of reasoning to support them, you’re simply baldly stating an assertion based upon an incorrect knowledge of what a “definition” of a word is.

86

[QUOTE=you with the face]
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.
[/QUOTE]

Well, “B” is correct, but I have given cites that demostrate at least some non-slave descendants like the term “African-American”, including at least one very prominant person, Senator Obama.

BTW, speaking as a White person, I think some of us at least think that at least some African-Americans prefer the term “African-American” to “Black”. Your earlier post implies that we are probably incorrect about that. Frankly, I see problems with both terms, but since race is a common topic in our society, we have to use some words to communicate. There isn’t a perfect word (for either Whites or Blacks), so we make due with what we have.

87

literal =! reasonable.

Microwaving a puppy won’t make it a hot dog.

88

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
The standard “hyphenated-American” nomenclature uses the nation of origin linked to the adjective American.
[/QUOTE]

Well, that’s one standard. But if we are talking about White people as a group, I’ve certainly seen the term “European-Americans” or “Americans of European descent” used. I use that term for myself since I can trace my ancestry to half a dozen countries in Europe but don’t particularly identify with any one of them. My first preferece is to simply be called an American, but if I must be identifed with some ethinicity, European-American is about as specific as it makes sense to be.

89

I think I finally understand the thing that bugs people about “African-American.” You can say “European-Americans” to mean (colloquially and racially) white people of any European heritage and descent in America You can say “Asian-Americans” to mean yellow people of any Asian heritage and descent in America. But when you say “African-Americans” you got people like me all, “Wait! Hold up. Not so fast.”

Well, tough. Afro-American preceded those other two terms by almost a century and changed to African-American in the 70s to distance the term from the hairstyle. European-American is inclusive of many ethnic groups and nationalities. Inclusive, also, is Asian-American. But African-American refers exclusively to one specific black ethnic group: (sometimes ex-slaves and freeborn blacks but usually) descendents of black American slaves.

That may well change. It may be changing now, if tom’s experiences are a percursor.

I think the simplest course is to avoid continental designations for all but African-Americans and embrace the wonderful nonsense of racial color coding to represent ethnic and national origin. White folks. Yellow folks. Red folks. Brown folks. Black folks. Mocha folks.

90

I agree that Charlize Theron is not an African-American by the most common usage of the term. (What exactly would be a more common term for somebody like her - Euro-African?) But Barack Obama is an African-American by that same most common usage - you can’t claim common usage to defend one of your poisitions and then argue it’s meaningless when it doesn’t support your position.

Being a South African-American or a Kenyan-American is not exclusive from being an African-American. A person can be a Sicilian-American and an Italian-American or a Bavarian-American and a German-American. Or a Polish-American or Greek-American and a European-American. The larger geographical hyphenates enclose the smaller ones, not eliminate them.

I hope this doesn’t come across as offensive, but this seems to be an unnecessarily racial position. To claim that there is no way at all that Charlize Theron is an African-American is basically to argue that a person’s race is the only factor that defines them. Nationality, birthplace, religion, ethnic ancestry - all these are completely overwhelmed by race. Identity as an African-American is solely determined by the proverbial “drop of blood”.

Me, I don’t see it that way. I see how Martin Luther King can be defined as an African-American. I also see how Barack Obama, Charlize Theron, Bob Marley, Nelson Mandela, and Wendie Malick can also be considered African-Americans depending on the particular context the term is used in. Certainly some usages are more common than others and have greater weight, but it’s a matter of degree.

91

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
I agree that Charlize Theron is not an African-American by the most common usage of the term. (What exactly would be a more common term for somebody like her - Euro-African?)
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Dude, her ethnicity is Afrikaner. So the correct and most precise thing to call her would be Afrikaner-American, if she were to become naturalized.

Colin Farell would be Irish-American should he become naturalized.

Sting would be an English-American.

Naomi Campbell would be English-American, too. However, her ethnic identity more precisely is called Afro-Jamaican given her immigrant heritage.

See how this works? If you understand why it’s folly to call your average citizen a Native American, why can’t you extrapolate the same idea to A-A?

92

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Me, I don’t see it that way. I see how Martin Luther King can be defined as an African-American. I also see how Barack Obama, Charlize Theron, Bob Marley, Nelson Mandela, and Wendie Malick can also be considered African-Americans depending on the particular context the term is used in.
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Given your rubric, Bob Marley would not be an A-A since he hailed from Jamaica, right?

93

I just wanted to chime in and say I back up Askia’s viewpoint on the term “African-American.” I’ve always used it in a precise fashion, and it’s always been as much a cultural signifier to me as an ethnic signifier, and it’s always meant “Americans descended from African slaves.” I also have never heard a person of Jamaican or recent African ancestry refer to themselves as “African-American.” If anything, I may have heard “Ethiopian-American,” but certainly not “African-American.”

So, Askia, while it appears we’re in the minority, I definitely use the same definition as you do, and I know others who do. The general populace, however, use a more liberal definition.

94

Wikipedia suggestions that Askia and I are using an older definition of “African American”

95

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Well, “B” is correct, but I have given cites that demostrate at least some non-slave descendants like the term “African-American”, including at least one very prominant person, Senator Obama.
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Obama grew up in A-A culture. He’s married to an A-A and his constituents are A-As. So his self-identity as an A-A is probably rooted in loyalties to the people who have “adopted” him, so to speak. Citing Obama as some type of proof that A-A is a reasonable way of describing all black people in America is not very persuasive.

Honestly, I think white people subconsciously think there is something wrong with calling someone black. Maybe they think it sounds bad. Maybe (subconsciously) they think being black is bad. So they automatically think that A-A was contrived out of PCness, as a euphemism, when really its just another word in the toolshed used to distinguish one group of folks from another. This is speculation, of course, which is not appropriate in this forum.

I see no problem with black or A-A. Any problems that we have in this department are only reflected by the language we use. Not caused by it.

96

[QUOTE=you with the face]

Honestly, I think white people subconsciously think there is something wrong with calling someone black. Maybe they think it sounds bad. Maybe (subconsciously) they think being black is bad.
[/QUOTE]

I agree with this. People use “African American” as a synonym for “black,” which it is not, and leads to such silliness like calling Nelson Mandela “African-American.” I just realized that my usage of the words comes from AP Style. In AP Style, “black” is used as a physical descriptor. “African-American” is used where the cultural distinction is necessary. And somewhere in journalism classes I learned that African-American culture historically refered to the culture of slave-descended Africans, not recent emigrants.

97

[QUOTE=pulykamell]
So, Askia, while it appears we’re in the minority, I definitely use the same definition as you do, and I know others who do. The general populace, however, use a more liberal definition.
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I would only call it a “liberal” definition if the people who they applied it to accepted the term or were trying to change the term themselves, a la gay or gender reassignment terms like he and she. I personally do not see African-American being that broadly used by black immigrants, although that New York Times article John Mace linked makes it seem like there’s this big debate over the term among immigrants to adopt it themselves when so far there’s not that much evidence that’s true.

The thing that Mr. Kamus forgets to mention is that Ethiopian-Americans like himself frequent say, “We are different”, too. We all agree that we’re black, but, to use a African-American saying, not all your skinfolk are your kinfolk.

The American general populance is known to misapply terms for things that, often, they don’t want to understand. Look how often transvestites and transsexuals are conflated. Look at how often pedophiles are still sometimes assumed to be gay or lesbian. To this day people who don’t bother to distinguish between differing Asian ethnicities living here will confuse a Vietnamese with a Thai, a Chinese with a Japanese or Korean. Americans still call football “soccer!” So trying to call all black people here African-American to avoid ethnic precison confusion like they do with Asians is part of a long, stubborn tradition of taking shortcuts.

98

[QUOTE=Askia]
The American general populance is known to misapply terms for things that, often, they don’t want to understand. Look how often transvestites and transsexuals are conflated. Look at how often pedophiles are still sometimes assumed to be gay or lesbian. To this day people who don’t bother to distinguish between differing Asian ethnicities living here will confuse a Vietnamese with a Thai, a Chinese with a Japanese or Korean. Americans still call football “soccer!” So trying to call all black people here African-American to avoid ethnic precison confusion like they do with Asians is part of a long, stubborn tradition of taking shortcuts.
[/QUOTE]

Well, I was with you until “soccer.” It’s an English term (from “association football”) , and I do believe it is a common if not the common term (somebody correct me if I’m wrong) for football in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

99

[QUOTE=Askia]
I think the simplest course is to avoid continental designations for all but African-Americans and embrace the wonderful nonsense of racial color coding to represent ethnic and national origin. White folks. Yellow folks. Red folks. Brown folks. Black folks. Mocha folks.
[/QUOTE]

Wait, so Colin Powell was our first High Yella Secretary of State, and his successor, Condoleezza Rice is our first Café au Lait SOS?

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
I hope this doesn’t come across as offensive, but this seems to be an unnecessarily racial position. To claim that there is no way at all that Charlize Theron is an African-American is basically to argue that a person’s race is the only factor that defines them. Nationality, birthplace, religion, ethnic ancestry - all these are completely overwhelmed by race. Identity as an African-American is solely determined by the proverbial “drop of blood”.
[/quote]

Then you’re not a good listener, either. Apparently all the explanations about what a word’s definition is and how compounds often mean something rather different from their component parts have completely eluded you.

You seem to be assigning an awful lot of wait to what you “see” and very little to any sort of rational or useful definitions of the terms (to say nothing of their actual definitions, which, once again, are based upon actual usage.) Barack Obama and Bob Marley (did he live in the U.S.?) may peripherally be said to be African-Americans, but in the case of the others you’ve mentioned, it’s simply ridiculous.

100

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Obama grew up in A-A culture. He’s married to an A-A and his constituents are A-As. So his self-identity as an A-A is probably rooted in loyalties to the people who have “adopted” him, so to speak. Citing Obama as some type of proof that A-A is a reasonable way of describing all black people in America is not very persuasive.
[/quote]

If you read the NYT article you see that Obama was just one example. Yes, some African immigrants (maybe even most) do not like that term A-A. But as I’ve been saying all along, this isn’t about likes and dislikes. Frankly, I think people are mixing too much politics with linguistics here. If a term means “X” in the common parlance of the country (and in the dictionary, btw) one can’t just magically claim that it does not mean “X” simply because one doesn’t want it to mean “X”. Note this, from the NYT article:

It doesn’t say “is rapidly replacing”, it says “has rapidly replaced”- past tense, done deal.

Maybe, but according the NYT article, more Blacks perfer the term “African-American” than “Black”, so I think that’s the more parsimonious explanation.