I agree that it is quite silly to keep the African-American or Asian-American labels unless you’re an immigrant. I definitely look more Chinese than anything (even though it’s only half my blood) and living in China for the past year and a half has made me acutely aware of the fact that I can’t really call myself Chinese-American. I’ve gotten used to the culture, but it’s definitely much more foreign to me than say France or Italy.
What’s funny is that most Chinese can’t seem to get the concept of yellow Americans, or even brown or black Americans. So they have the concept of a huaren or huaqiao, which indicates a Chinese person being abroad, but the implication is that this person is still fundamentally Chinese. While this is true of some huaqiaos, others have clearly left the culture behind, which makes grouping the two types together absolutely meaningless. A real Chinese-American would feel at least partially at home in both China and America, and the same goes for African-Americans, etc. I’d save the label for them. Just call me American (or a yellow American if you must), despite all the flak I get for our nation’s actions over here…
I think it is silly to keep caring this much. Most black people I’ve met don’t care this much in my experience. I use black because it’s descriptive. I’m not going to put any of them into slavery or stop them from drinking from the water fountain. I don’t get upset that a black guy is sitting in the front of the bus because he’s black, I get upset cuz there’s no seats. I tend to prefer sitting in the back of the bus because it’s closer to the exit, and I don’t have people tripping over me to get to the back of the bus.
I am Native American. On my father’s side I can trace my ancestry in this country back more than two hundred years before I was born. I have no connection to any of my old world ties. My Mother’s family came over here at the end of the century before last from Poland and Lithuania. I am tired of feeling guilty about this stuff, it’s such old news. The constant worry is just more salt in the wound. It’s time to let that wound close by ending the PC doublespeak. I know calling American Indians, Indians is a mistake of the language but the appropriate thing to call them would be their national identity, and that’s expecting a superhuman lack of ignorance from people, most of whom have had less contact with “Native” Americans than I have being that I grew up in New Mexico.
I grew up in the state where settlers went to get away from the BS politics, and I am kind of sick of being asked to pick a side in arguments I find ludicrous. I’d rather have the luxury of speaking colloquially and not out of some anal retentive desire to adhere to some ephemeral appropriateness that no one can even agree upon.
I don’t think most people even care that much about all this, that’s one of the saving graces of X-Box and Playstation culture, all the little kids care more about that than they do about race relations.
I am an American I have white skin, if you are describing me say I am white. If you are American and you have black skin I will describe you as black. If you are Nigerian, and I know that you are Nigerian I might refer to you as such because it’s descriptive. The rest of this nonsense is just perpetuating the hate and vitriol. It’s time to move on.
tomendebb. I think it was the combination of italics and that particular word choice I was having a problem with, but thanks for clarifying what you were saying.
Windwalker, mswas. I don’t think the term “African-American” for descendants of black slaves is silly. Refer to **cowgirl’s ** excellent post or holmes’ succinct commentary why. Nor do I think caring about your ethnic heritage is silly. Sadly many black people don’t care to parse the difference but then I am not, in many ways, like most black people you’d meet.
Pride and awareness of one’s heritage does not perpetuate hate and vitriol unless you do so to justify socioeconomic or racial superiority. Typically it’s dismissive attitudes about other people’s cultures and what they choose to call themselves that cause more problems than how much they decide to appreciate it.
Descriptive of what? Color or culture? How black do I have to be to call myself black? What if I’m from Cuba, am I still black? Are you aware in many countries, black people consider themselves white and self-indentify as white? Are you aware that people from different countries, get offended if you can them black? They will tell you, that they’re Haitian, or Dominican or whatever…but they are not black.
Now granted in the everyday shorthand we use to communicate, black, white, asian, latin; are perfectly fine. I don’t think anyone as ever suggested differently. What’s being suggested is however, when you speak about a specific group of people, i.e African-American, is a better descriptor than just saying black. The same way Irish-American is better than white. And it’s no more PC or silly for blacks to be called African-American, than it is for whites to be called Polish-Americans and why do you care?
Are you fighting the PC police if you call them black anyway or are you doing something else?
What’s the descriptor, color or culture? Which the more acurate description of a “white” person with “black” ancestry? White, Black or African-American? I understand YOU don’t care, but trust me, there are people who do care and it’s not PC to respect their wishes.
For me, the obvious answer is African-American. It has nothing to do with color, but with hertiage. A person regardless of skin color, who can and desires to acknowledge his African ancestors is an African-American. We all can’t be black, but we all can be African-American and that’s why it’s important to focus on the “ethnic” and not skin color. Anyone should be able to acknowledge one’s ancestors without having to use a paper bag as a guide.
Again if you decide to ignore their wishes and can them white anyway, you’re what, honest…keeping it real?
I could neve imagine telling an Irish-American, Polish-American or German-American that it’s PC or silly to call them that and I sure as hell would never see it suggested that they “move on”.
Why do we grant that the rest of ethic Americans are able to function fine in their hypens, but people of color have to “move on” or just be a generic “black” or “asian”.
I don’t think anybody is organizing any protests around this issue. I know that it’s fairly low on the list of things that I get worked up about. But it’s still important as a question of evolving language. I like language to be used precisely, I know that words can be very powerful in influencing how the world is arranged (particularly when it comes to historically disadvantaged groups of people), and I feel that the very least anybody can do to respect another person is to call them what they want to be called.
The thing I do care very much about is race and racism, and how it’s very difficult if not impossible to have a sensible and productive discussion about it in this day and age. We still see race very much as a black and white issue (if you’ll pardon my choice of words there). Racism is because of racists, people say. Discussions of race usually turn into accusations of racism, and nobody wants to be called racist. So rather than figure out anything meaningful, we usually just end up pointing fingers.
If nobody will identify as being racist, then why is there so much racism in our communities? I have no answer for this, but I know that we can’t reach an answer until each of us discards our smug self-perception that “Oh, I’m not racist, I don’t care if you’re white, black, yellow, blue or purple!” and that we look at the nuanced and subtle ways that racism actually works.
For instance:
My husband (remember, the black African) had dreadlocks for a while, and he took quite a lot of flak from people calling him Jamaican. This flak came variously from white Canadians, “African-Americans,” Africans in Canada, and Africans in Africa. He told me his family in Africa would have been quite horrified if they knew he had dreads, because as far as they’re concerned, only sketchy Jamaicans do that sort of thing.
If there are no blacks/Africans/Jamaicans, if we’re all just human, then how can we talk about it? What language do we use?
See, here I’m not accusing anybody of racism, because what would be the point?
I’m more interested in the dynamic that this indicates: being identified as Jamaican (even mistakenly) is negative. Why?
Why did that black woman sneer “You African!” - as an insult - at my husband?
Is this related to the empirical fact that black people continue to be disadvantaged in this society?
How can we talk about this without sorting out our terminology?
I’m currently a guest member and love this board so far.
I read a novel based in Great Britan, that included a scene where the mother of the main character, referred to her daughter’s boyfriend (who was born in England) as “African American” in an effort to be poltically correct. I laughed out loud - literally.
I consider myself American - African, but take no offense at being called by any of the previously used designations. A respectful person calling me Negro or colored or black (why lower case I’ve alway wondered if it’s a racial designation) is just fine.
Where did the term “Hispanic” come from? Hispanola includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic - I never took Latin or Spanish classes so there may be a root word that I’m not familiar with, but it seems somehow wrong to me.
My understanding is that Oriental, meaning “Eastern”, is sometimes considered Eurocentric - the part of Asia that “Asians” come from doesn’t derive its identity from being east of Europe, but from being Asian.
ISTM the proper name to describe someone is the one they want to be described as, nothing more, nothing less. If the OP’s friend wants to be called a Negro, then do so.
To cover all of Spanish-speaking Latin America and the people and culture derived from Spain. “Spanish” is too closely associated with Spain itself to work. “Latin America”, I’ve read, was a term invented and propounded by Napoleon to help Portuguese Brazil feel some affinity with France (and the rest of the countries descended from the Roman Empire), and thereby be more inclined to revolt against Portugal and ally with France.
I’ve laughed at situations like this, too. African-American is a narrow politically correct descriptor that should have been discarded as ridiculous the moment it was coined. As you point out, its nonsense is illustrated as soon as it’s transported elsewhere. Who would tolerate without at least a smirk, African-Swiss, African-Scot or even African-South African?
What of hypothetical white-bread Hans van Dutchname and his blonde, blue-eyed wife, Heidi, both of whom emigrated from Johannesburg to Kansas 15 years ago, and whose ancestors lived in Africa for 300 years, as their parents and grandparents still do? What are they, if not African-American? The term better describes them than a black couple in the Bronx — speaking of the Dutch — who, like their ancestors going back 300 years never set foot outside the United States, if not the state.
I should also have mentioned that Napoleon was trying to encourage Spain’s colonies in the Americas to revolt as well.
Foaming, yes, any such term becomes absurd when you look at it too closely. In the US, though, by generally accepted definition, Black and African-American mean “descended from slaves”. Somebody from Africa who came here, or is descended from non-slave Africans, will generally use their actual African country of origin, as in “Nigerian-American”. Slaves’ descendents rarely know that and it’s less central to their cultural identity anyway.
Right but there is no commonly held agreement on this issue. I find that calling someone black doesn’t really bother most people unless they have a serious stick up their @$$. Expecting the average person to have some sort of academic rigor in naming every possible ethnicity on the planet is simply ludicrous. That is a form of racism in and of itself. Everyone is terrified of being known as ignorant, and this causes divisions, it causes a fearful society of people afraid to get to know someone because they are so terrified of calling someone the wrong term. Oftentimes this fear is turned into misplaced rage, and they get mad at that which they fear because they fear it. So it perpetuates the cycle of racism.
It isn’t racist to not know something about someone’s culture, it is racist to assume that you DO know when you don’t and be unwilling to be swayed when presented with evidence to the contrary. However, due to strict rules like what to call black people we have confused the populace into paralysis, so it perpetuates the ignorance it is attempting to thwart. Most people when shown that there is nothing to fear, and in fact pleasure to be gained through interaction will open up very quickly, and a flood of new information will come in that will wash away their ignorance, but if they remain scared and paralyzed they will never open up on this level.
Here’s an example, if a black person in America did something culturally that I did not know of and I found it funny, I might seriously offend them, so I have been trained to hold back my laughter. However, if I went to an African village where there is an assumption that there are cultural differences, it would be much more accepted for me to laugh about differences in cultural norms, simply because I do not know. They would laugh when I performed my silly American quirks as well, and a bond of friendship would be formed.
As white people we are constantly taught to harden our exterior, and what this hardening of exterior does is make us retract our empathy. I am taught that the pain have felt over this issue is irrelevant because I was not on the side being oppressed. Why is it that my feelings on this issue are irrelevant simply because I am white? In all fairness it is usually white people telling me this, but it certainly doesn’t lead to a desire to go out and hang out with black people more, because I am taught that they are something to be feared, not because they will hurt me, but because I will be hopelessly socially awkward in the face of THE BIGGEST ISSUE EVER TO FACE MANKIND!!! We don’t allow room for a bit of innocent ignorance. We call it racism, yes perhaps we are racist and we are taught to be racist, but it’s not as big a deal as we make it out to be, it’s because we inflate it that it becomes such a big deal. We need to start to shrink the demilitarized zones between cultures in this country, that’s what being a melting pot is all about. Expecting me to have some superhuman cultural awareness is rather silly. I get told quite often by foreigners that my cultural awareness is very high for an American, and they are shocked that I have never left the country. However, even what I have gained from my years of living in New York, is criminally insufficient to some people who have a chip on their shoulder regarding this issue.
I walk through my neighborhood in fear of the black people that live here, and they sense that fear. I’ve even had an interaction where a guy told me I didn’t need to be afraid. He was a big dude, however fear of personal safety wasn’t what made me afraid. I was afraid of social awkwardness. I was really stoned and it exacerbated my introversion. What this guy didn’t know and I was incapable of explaining at the time was that most of it was general social awkwardness that I have with people of any color. In turn I actually oftentimes respect black people more than I do white people, because I simply don’t care as much if I offend a white person, but it’s a really awful travesty if I offend a black person. My racism isn’t at all based in hate, it’s based in social awkwardness, something that isn’t helped by a constant barrage of etiquette that no one can seem to agree upon. Also I find that a lot of black people are simply more down to Earth than white people, and I have a respect for that, because I feel like being down to Earth is something sorely lacking in New York, and other havens of liberalism.
I’ve grown up on the streets as well, I’ve known drug addicts, hookers, drug dealers, drug traffickers, car thiefs, anarchists, you name it, I’ve been around the block. When I was in jail once a Mexican gangbanger who was definitely going down for murder, I could see it in his eyes, was the person who was the nicest to me in there. I have known two people who shot someone, and another person who stabbed someone. All of different ethnicities. I’ve known rich black people and rich white people. One of my Acid dealers was of the Hindu Brahmin class. In all my dealings with all these people, it is this expectation of an inhuman sense of cultural sensitivity that has made things the most awkward, it’s the thing that holds people back from social mobility more than anything else.
While I am all for improving oneself, I am also all for understanding that people aren’t gonna know everything about your culture, and just because they don’t that doesn’t mean they hate you.
The truth of the matter is, slavery wasn’t my fault. I don’t think I could even trace my family back to having owned slaves, at least that I know of. My family came over to America escaping persecution like most of the people that settled here, and it’s not fair to hold me responsible for that persecution especially since I DO want to change those inequities. This holds for a lot of people, and I am tired of living under the racism Catch 22, which is founded on the racist belief that because I am white I have it better than everyone else. I’m a white gentile from New Mexico, and more than anything else that has been a secret to any success I’ve had is an ability to assimilate into Jewish culture, and this is one thing that has NOTHING to do with what my family provided for me monetarily or socially.
So in the end I’m gonna continue to call people black because it’s descriptive, and it’s worked pretty well so far.
To preface my remarks, it is my pratice, when referring to a group, to use the word that a member of that group whom I am addressing prefers. Simple civility.
As to the quoted section: “Irish-American” is not equivalent to “white.” Irish-American is fine as a descriptor of Yanks of Irish descent (such as my Mom). My kids, however, are German-Irish-French-English-Americans. And when Jesse Jackson announced to the media, following a Labor Day meeting of (some) black leaders that they had decided that they preferred “African American,” it made sense (given his Chicago background, where there are lots of “Irish-” “Italian-” “Polish-” and other “hyphenated-ethnic-group-Americans”). However, away from the Rust Belt, such nomenclature is pretty rare. (It is not non-existent, but it is much less common.)
So when one wishes to identify the large body of people of European ancestry (with contributions from West Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and Northern African peoples) who dominate this country, “white” tends to work. There is some squabbling around the edges as one group or another attempts to seek inclusion or seeks to exclude others, but in a social setting, identifying people as white conveys a common understanding of the large group named. And, since the majority of people do not live in the Rust Belt any more and since the word “white” is already in common usage, it is unlikely tht anyone is going to get far championing a change from the five letter, single syllable “white” to the 17 character, 8 syllable “European-American” when we have several hundred years of literature (and, unfortunately, laws) that have already embedded “white” in our social discourse.
Now, African-American does convey a meaning, subject to the problem that “hyphenated-American” strikes many people outside the Rust Belt as odd. (And the odd TV reporter identifying Nelson Mandela as African-American.) It is not PC police (whoever they might be) who enforce that nomenclature; it is individuals within that group who prefer that term. However, Jesse Jackson and his focus group notwithstanding, the last I saw, around 60% of people in that group expressed a preference for “black” over “African-American” (with smaller percentages preferring Afro-American, Negro, and even colored). On a personal level, every individual with whom I have worked, or with whom I have gone to school or church, or near whom I have lived have preferred the word “black.”
If I ever find myself discussing society with Jesse Jackson or Spike Lee, I will be happy to use “African American” because I know that that is their preference. At home, I use “black” because the people with whom I interact use “black.”
The problem with your ridicule and your smirking is that the discussion is expressly limited to the U.S. It does become irrelevant (and occasionally comical) when “transported elsewhere,” but that only means that it has no business being transported outside this country. There are places where “nigger” is simply a term, but I would strongly caution a person from those places to not “transport” it to the U.S.
“African-American” is not ridiculous; it is an effort to deal with a particular social situation and making sweeping declarations against it is a demonstration of ignorance–something we’re supposed to be fighting, here. I agree that Jackson’s experience in the Rust Belt probably shaped that decision and that a broader experience might have caused the group to rethink that choice. However, that is matter of making a good effort, but missing the mark, not a matter of being ridiculous.
Absolutely, which is why we have Polish-American, Irish-American etc, and not just Euro-American. Why are the rules different for people of Africa or people of color in general?
While there’s nothing wrong with the oft-mentioned “white” African, calling himself an African-American. Most likely as Elvis1ives noted, they will refer to their country of origin, not the continent; just like European immigrants do.
I’m not sure what rules are supposed to be different.
All the various ethnic mixings (with corresponding discrimination, both de facto and de jure), that have occurred in this country have led to a hodgepodge of social distinctions that have been reflected in our language. Since different linguistic terms arose at different times under different conditions, there is no logic behind them. Attempting to impose logic will fail, (unless we declare all earlier usage void and start over), so we simply make do with attempting to shape future discourse with (fallible) efforts to coin terms today.
tomndebb you and i aren’t in disagreement. I agree that in most everyday contact, generic discriptors are fine. I don’t expect anyone to look at a group of black people and call them African-Americans, anymore than I expect to look at a group of whites and call them Irish-Americans, based solely on the color of their skin and that’s certainly not my intention.
Maybe I wasn’t clear and that’s my fault, but it looks like you think i was saying that Irish-American was a suitable term, for** any and all **white people and I wasn’t. I was trying to point out that in describing a group of people who’s Irishness was something that they prided themselves on and may be important to the discussion, calling them the generic “white” would be less of an acurate description, than calling them Irish-American.
And I would go further to preemptively forestall the frequent (stupid) objection that “Well, then they ought to be called ‘Ibo-American’ and ‘Ewe-American’ and ‘Dagoma-American’.” that I’m sure that some of them would love to if the slave traders had not deliberately erased all their efforts to retain their identities.
You want a really silly example? Once in elementary school, during Black History Month, the hallways were lined with posters of famous/great African-Americans. One of the “African-Americans” featured was Nelson Mandela (and yes, it did use that term on his poster).
Actually, the most widely accepted theory is that all humans in the world today are descended from a group living in Africa as recently as ~75,000 years ago. The earlier waves of human ancestors* that left Africa prior to that time all beacame extinct without contributing to the current human gene pool.
*for example, the Erectus population in Europe that eventually evolved into Neanderthals.
But that’s not the issue. I don’t think most black people get upset if they’re called “black.” What I (and others) object to are things like references to “the black community.” The assumption that there is such a thing comes from people’s assumptions that all black people have something important in common which people who aren’t black, don’t have. This in turn comes from the language use - we use the same word for all these people, that must mean that there is a significant commonality between all these people. If we reject attempts to distinguish among them (black, African-American, African-born American, etc) then we cannot see these differences.
When people say things like “The black community really needs to do something about all this black-on-black crime,” they are automatically implicating all blacks, while releasing all non-blacks from implication. I believe comments like that come from an unproblematized acceptance of “black” as the only word for all ‘those’ people.
Nobody is doing that. I only hear people asking for sensitivity; that if a black person says “excuse me, I’d prefer if you called me X instead of Y,” that people respond with “Oh, okay” rather than “Well, the last black person I talked to wanted to be called Y instead of X, why can’t you people make up your minds?”
I definitely agree that this paralysis is bad. Where we differ is that I don’t percieve there to be “strict rules,” this may be because I grew up in radical lefty circles in Canada. Who knows.
That’s totally cool by me, as long as you don’t call all black people “the black community.”
Probably postcolonial academics, based on the late, great Edward Said’s writings on the subject. I wouldn’t call it a “movement” except in their own rarified circles; it is up to us as citizens and community members to determine if it is a movement we would like to pick up.
(The introduction to Orientalism is very enlightening if you don’t feel like reading the entire book.) In sum:
I think the word “oriental” has substantially different meanings in North America than in Europe, where (as I understand it) it is (or has been) used to describe “people who aren’t Western” in a way that has historically been rather perjorative, and where the study of “them” has been more entrenched. Said certainly implies that it was applied indiscriminately to Africa and Asia; Egyptian, Moroccan, sub-Saharan African, (and particularly, to Said) Arab people, as well as Chinese, Japanese, Korean (etc) people that we are accustomed to. Hence the objection.
As someone who has spent some time in postcolonial academic circles, I see the argument but I can’t get too worked up about it. I can’t relate to Said’s particular argument because I am unfamiliar with the writings he refers to (and the field of Orientalism which he describes). I trust that he is not making it up out of whole cloth, as many other aspects of his work (beyond the word Oriental and its derivatives) have resonated quite deeply with me.
But it is being transported, whether you like it or not, which is why I used “African-South African” to illustrate why it should not be accepted.
Or any other country listed in a UN Rolodex.
You equate my disagreement about the incorrect usage of the term as ridicule and ignorance, and that by posting here my disagreement with those who misuse it wholesale, I am contributing to ignorance. I’m shocked . . . shocked. My argument against its misuse is not sweeping. It is particular. However, if you keep in mind that the United States is not the world, I’ll keep in mind that your words mean only what you want them to mean.
The usage is ridiculous, but since the word bothers you so much, if ever I hear African-Congolese-Kinsashan as a synonym for black, I promise not to smirk.
cowgirl I agree with your assessment completely. It’s ironic that your experience with liberal radicals is the opposite of mine. My experience is that they are the ones who want me to feel the most guilty about it oftentimes.
Also, Orientalism is a great book, I’ve read some of it, never finished it.