Here’s a Harvard Gazette webpage talking about the problem of “Invisible Immigrants” from the West Indies and a study over two generations of such people in NYC. Note the paragraphs about how second generation immigrants are finding it more advantageous to stress their differing ethnicity from African-Americans in order to avoid racism and discrimination and to receive better treatment.
For that second example to work for you in this debate, it needs to be that the victim is presumed, somehow, to have had ample opportunity to get to know the suspect’s relevant personal history. Otherwise, *you with the face can easily reply to you by saying “I’ll assume the Ethiopian is the suspect–it seems clear the victim simply made the usually safe assumption that the Ethiopian is an American descended from African slaves.”
-Kris
Here’s the summary of a medical abstract that urges the refining ethnic labels in scientific writing.
[quote=Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African American or what?
Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century]
Broad terms such as Black, African, or Black African are entrenched in scientific writings although there is considerable diversity within African descent populations and such terms may be both offensive and inaccurate. This paper outlines the heterogeneity within African populations, and discusses the strengths and limitations of the term Black and related labels from epidemiological and public health perspectives in Europe and the USA. This paper calls for debate on appropriate terminologies for African descent populations and concludes with the proposals that (1) describing the population under consideration is of paramount importance (2) the word African origin or simply African is an appropriate and necessary prefix for an ethnic label, for example, African Caribbean or African Kenyan or African Surinamese (3) documents should define the ethnic labels (4) the label Black should be phased out except when used in political contexts.
Keywords: Negro; Black; black African; African American; African Caribbean; terminology.
[/quote]
How many Americans comes across African expatriates on a frequent basis and how many are put in the position of having to describe these people with a term like A-A? That’s the million-dollar question that I don’t think is supported by anything that you’ve posted.
If I asked your average American if a veterinarian is a doctor, most will probably say yes. Right? But when you turn it around and ask them what they think of when someone says “the doctor”, I’d wager that most people will say “physician”. It’s going to be hard for me to cite this, but I can try.
Would it be correct for me to say that when most people say “I’m going to the doctor” they are equally likely to be talking about veterinarians and physicians (on a per capita basis, of course)? No, it would not be correct for me to leap to that conclusion. I take issue with the conclusion that you’ve reached for the very same reason. People are more apt to say “I’m going to the veterinarian” when talking about the vet because they know that saying “the doctor” will lead people into thinking they are talking about physicians when that is not their intent.
But when you use A-A, do you have in mind all blacks in this country? Or are you usually only talking about descendants of slaves? Not just because they are more numerous, but because of what the terminology is tacitly understood to represent.
This is legalistic argument. I’ve never stated that the definition you put forth is wrong per se, so in this example, the immigrant qualifies as A-A under the legalistic definition and is legally entitled to whatever he get can out of it.
On the other hand, don’t you agree that a lot of outsiders (maybe even yourself) would feel like this guy was trying to slip through a loophole of sorts? Wouldn’t you think to yourself that he was taking advantage of the system in a way that wasn’t intended? Would you recognize his “special status” even if the written words do not? Wouldn’t a part of you say “That’s not fair!”. I mean, beyond that what you’d normally say about Affirmation Action. I suspect you would. And that’s what I’m talking about.
In this situation, A-A is being used as a substitute for black. As a physical descriptor, black is the better term to use between the two because A-A is not supposed to represent race but ethnicity. Your hypothetical suspect might not be an American; he could very well be a illegal Haitian refugee and therefore not a African-American by any definition of the term. So it’s best to call him black, if absolutely had to choose between the two.
To be honest, though, black sucks all kind of apples when its used as physicial descriptor. If Colin Powell and Wesley Snipes are both black men, how much meaningful information is communicated by calling the suspect black? In these type of situations, it’s probably best to resort to the color wheel thingie that Askia mentioned earlier. But we are about 200 hundred years away from that happening.
Tough. Whatever the millions say a term means is what it means.
Your whole argument keeps coming down to “but it should…”
We keep telling you that doesn’t matter one whit.
As Yogi Berra once supposedly said: if people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nothing can stop them. Same with language.
You might as well stand on a soapbox yelling about the superiority of the metric system. You’ll get exactly the same results. 
There are terms that are assumed to be more restrictive than they need to be and there are terms that are assumed to be less restrictive. You cite “doctor”, I cite “tennis shoe”.
I think all Blacks, as my very first post to this thread would indicate. It never once occured to me that Senator Obama would not be called an African-American-- and I know he’s not the descendents of slaves. Scouts honor!
Maybe we should call a truce and realize that the term means one thing to most Blacks and another thing to most Whites.
I already commented on that topic in this thread. I really don’t have a position, as I can see good arguments on both sides. I’d be more inclined to look at the person’s wealth to decide if they were taking advantage of a loophole or not. The descendents of slaves have had a raw deal for a long time, but a recent African immigrant is going to be discriminated agaisnt by Whites in much the same way. AA laws are meant to address ongoing racism as well as past injustices.
Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern-- they all suck all kinds of appels. They’re all terrible descriptors, but they’re still used all the time. Humans make erroneous generalizations all the time, so it shouldn’t be surprising that our langauge refects that. In fact, it’s the rare exception when it doesn’t. Why do you think the legal and scientific proffessions are so careful to define words very explicitly?
So basically what you’re saying is: no matter how much historical, contemporary, anectdotal and factual evidence myself and others provide that African-American is a specific ethnic term for the descendents of black African slaves in America (and freeman) and that other black expatriate groups here vastly don’t use and and often reject the term being applied to themselves, don’t personally identify with it except literally, often don’t celebrate African-American holidays like Juneteenth, Kwanzaa or African-American history month, preferring their own ethnic descriptors and celebrations – but once a few million confused white people hear a joke on Saturday Night Live and make up their minds that African-Americans is going to mean all Africans in America, that’s it, they’re going to ignore a century of precedence and contemporary active usage among the people it applies to and nobody else has any say --?
Whew. My countrymen.
… Okay. I’m out. This is turning into a needless debate and the question has already been answered factually. Someday African-American may indeed mean, ethnically, all black peoples in America who come from Africa, but right this minute, on the cusp of July 4, 2006, it doesn’t mean that. As a practicng black man, I have doubts it ever will. I have been wrong before. I have been right before. We’ll see which one this is.
'Night, God Bless and be careful with those fireworks.
I think this whole argument is sort of silly because the term clearly primarily refers to the great majority of American blacks who were indeed the descendents of slaves; any use to describe the much smaller group of recent immigrants is a bit more peripheral. There are some linguists who subscribe to a theory of “prototypes” - rather than classical categories defined precisely by certain features, definitions of words (and several other things) are built around prototypes that represent the most central entities subsumed by the word. Under this analysis, descendents of slaves would be the prototype for “African-Americans”, and other black Americans - recent immigrants from Subsaharan Africa, Afro-Caribbeans, black South Americans, etc. - are less typical or less central members of the set. I don’t think you can argue that the term doesn’t primarily indicate the group that Askia uses it for. Indeed, long before I was aware of any political argument over it I felt that using the term in reference to those other groups was a bit of a stretch. People’s use of the term (or other terms) in regard to other groups are without a doubt going to be less precise, given that (at least for most of us) we spend far less time discussing Americans of Dominican or Nigerian origin. References to them as African-Americans could be the product of indiscriminate use of the term to describe all Americans of black African origin. Or they could be the result of not having another handy term to describe more recent immigrants, particularly those whose status they don’t know. Or, as in John Mace’s example of an Ethiopian immigrant, the term might often be employed by people who don’t know a person’s origins but simply assume that they are descendents of slaves.
And with any ethnonym, the borders are fuzzy anyway - we already use it conventionally to describe people who are only partly of slave descent; the “one drop” rule is still a large part of the American consciousness of “race”. Using the term in reference to people of African origin who are not the descendents of slaves but who nonetheless feel a kinship with the African-American community doesn’t seem like a particular contradiction under Askia’s definition unless you ascribe a great deal of precision to the term, precision that I think is unwarranted.
Overall, though, I think it’s a mistake to look too deeply into usage of the term to describe more peripheral members of the group. Reference to other black Americans is rarer in general; mistakes can easily lead people to use the term because they’re unaware of someone’s origins. People can use the term as a political tool rather than a purely descriptive one - certainly a possibility in regard to Colin Powell or, moreso, Barack Obama. But mostly, I doubt many people have carefully considered the issue and it might not have occurred to a lot of people how to describe non-slave-descended black Americans. And finally, the sample size of references to these Other Blacks is small enough that sampling error is a more significant factor - particularly given well-known uses of the term to describe people like Nelson Mandela who are quite obviously not African-American.
So I think it’s a bit of a mistake to assume that we can clearly measure “standard definitions” of the term, or ascribe too much weight to the few usages we can find when we don’t know if the speakers themselves might not think it’s particularly apt but don’t have a better idea. At very least, the term certainly describes descendents of slaves first and foremost; it’s certainly common in academic work to discuss African-American culture with no attention at all to that of Other Blacks. John Mace might describe that as overlooking other groups, but I’m inclined to see that as evidence that at the term’s prototype is the largest group it describes - those descended from slaves.
(All usages of “black” in the above post are in reference to people of Subsaharan African descent and not Australian Aborigines, Andamanese, negritos, dark-skinned people from the Indian Subcontinent, or Marvin the Martian. Blacula took place in Los Angeles, but its protagonist was an African immigrant without citizenship or permanent residency status, so he is not treated as African-American for the purposes of this writing. Arguments over Blackenstein’s ethnicity are still unsettled at this point.)
P.S.: I also use the term “black” to the exclusion of white, European-descended people, those of primarily Berber or Arab descent, the various Khoisan groups, and African pygmies, although such people are found in Subsaharan Africa.
All righty… here I go.
I am of mixed ethnicity - my father is African American; that is, he is descended from Africans brought to the US as slaves. My mother is Jamaican American; born in Jamaica, descended (as far as we know) by Africans brought to Jamaica… or somewhere in the Caribbean as slaves, and now a naturalized American. Me, I grew up in England where I was just “Black.” When I moved to the US I first met the term African American, which initially made me quite uncomfortable - because I understood it as a term for folks who derived their lineage entirely from the US experience of slavery. That doesn’t completely describe me accurately.
Most people don’t have time - nor do they care - to hear my mixed ethnic heritage story, and I certainly have had many experiences as a Black person in the US where I’ve experienced the joys (and negative aspects) of being Black… so I identify as African American for that reason. I’m an American of African lineage. I’m also Black, and Afro-Jamaican-American, or half Jamaican-American… that all works for me.
No-one in my family from Jamaica over the age of 30 considers themselves African American. They’re Jamaicans. Some are Jamaican Americans. The younger ones, those either born in Jamaica who moved here as kids, or born here, might use the term African American because it’s easiest for everyone to understand. If you wanted to know they’d identify proudly as having Jamaican heritage. Of all of the people I’ve known who have emigrated to the US from Haiti/Ghana/Kenya/Trinidad/the UK/other nations who are Black identify as “Haitian” or whatever their nationality is. I’ve never heard a Cape Verdean person, for instance, call themselves “African American.”
Here in the Boston area where there are large populations of Black people from Cape Verde, Haiti, and West African nations, the kids tend to call themselves “Haitian” or whatever. Askia’s point about perception affecting what you call yourself is pretty true. If I had moved to Miami as a teenager, I might call myself Jamaican… but as there are no Jamaicans around Central Texas when I was coming up, African American made the most sense.
Askia gets props for mentioning Mary Waters’ work. Black Identities is a great book. Actually, here at Harvard there is an ongoing discussion about the fact that so many Black students are first- or second-generation Americans from the West Indies or African nations. African American students - those who are descended from people of African ancestry and have lived in the US for multiple generations - are a notable minority. (You can see an article about this here.)
Well, yeah (except make that a few hundred million White people). That’s how language works. We didn’t get the memo, if there ever was a memo. The history is that we’ve had many terms used for Blacks over the years-- Negro, Colored, Afro-American, Black, African-American-- and none of the previous terms were used exclusively for descendents of slaves. Why should the new one be?
The language police never win these wars, and you’re not going to win this one either. I’m just calling 'em like I see 'em.
Amen. Happy 4th!!
And, speaking as one of those White people: if I meet a Jamaican immigrant, or a Canadian whose parents came over from Kenya twenty years ago, or whoever else you’d care to name – and he mentions that he’d like me to refer to him as “African-American”, well, then, look, I’m not going to say no; that memo, I just got.
Well, don’t speak for all white people, because I apparently got the memo. I use African-American exactly the same way Askia uses it, and many, if not most, of my white friends use it that way. As I’ve stated, to me, African-American connotes a culture and people that stems from the descendants of black slaves. I never use African-American as a physical descriptor. If I’m talking about a black guy, I say “that black guy.” The terms have never been synonymous in my mind.
I thought of this as I was shutting down my computer the last time I posted, but I had to leave, and I haven’t had net access since.
I get what you all are saying. I think I’ve been arguing in circles a bit, although honestly, being accused of all kinds of ridiculous things was not helping my thought process.
I understand that the AA term is supposed to mean something specific that only sort of relates to the words used to form the term.
I’m just too literal. I can’t do it. Since there is another term, I’ll use that one, even though I know it’s not very good either.
I’m free to choose a non-offensive term, you’re free to think that’s stupid. I’ll even help you.
All together: 1, 2, 3 - :wally
How about Papuans and Melanesians while you’re at it?
Damn those Melanesians! My ancient foes humiliate me again! But fear not: one day, I shall stand victorious over their various small islands in the southern Pacific Ocean!
The term “Negrito” includes Andaman Islanders (the original inhabitants), so you were redundant as well as incomplete in that post. 
I think you have in fact put your finger on the objections, whatever your feelings about them may be.
As for the brown folks, red folks, etc., I’m for going beyond that. People often don’t like to be lumped together with those they feel little kinship with. I’m often rolling my eyes at people who assume Africans are one cultural lump, or are the root spiritual people from whom all blessings flow (I’m looking kind of at you, Whitney Houston). People are people, and they have about as many problems as they have the ability to get into. They also like to form cliques and clubs and exclude others. Japan, from everything I’ve read, is an excellent example. In light of that, I try not to generalize much by skin reflectiveness.
Aw, shit. I don’t remember anything about what the Andamanese look like, except I thought they were dark-skinned. I should also mention that I don’t include blonde women from southern California with grotesquely leathery, blackened skin.
I suppose no one’s going to congratulate me on my l33t knowledge of blaxploitation horror films that I watched on cable while drunk . . . 
Heh. I asked some Canadian friends of mine what they call black people in Canada. Are they AfriCanadians or Can-Africans?