This isn’t really a rant about political correctness, it’s about that stupid goddamn descriptor “African American”
I have a B.S. in molecular biology. It’s out dated, so I went back to school and decided to study Nursing. My Psych 2 textbook has this:
Fucking please.
I don’t think “American” has a damn thing to do with genetics. Using that stupid fucking phrase implies that sickle cell is a condition mainly found in American blacks. It’s stupid; the phrase is too specific and need to die. When talking about genetic descent, or hell… I’ll say it . When talking about race, refering to the nationality is just fucking stupid.
That is pretty lame. If they were talking about diseases common among the other races, they’d use the race descriptor, like “Asian” or “Caucasian” or “Latino.”
Sounds like what you’re really pitting is the misuse of the phrase “African American” in contexts where it isn’t appropriate, such as textbooks talking about people of African descent in general.
“African American”, correctly used, seems to be an adequately descriptive and generally understood way to refer to American blacks. I don’t see why we should throw out the term entirely just because some textbook authors are too dumb to use it properly.
I hate it too. What is my American friend who is originally from Barbados? Most, if not all, of my black friends refer to themselves as black, not African-American. If I’m referring to blacks in another country, I wouldn’t think to call them African-Canadians, or African-Europeans.
What do blacks in other countries refer to themselves as?
Reminds me of one magazine’s coverage of the launch of Star Trek: Voyager, where they referred to the character of Tuvok as “Star Trek’s first African-American Vulcan.” :smack:
Needscoffee, one of my black friends gets peeved if called African American. I wish it were clearer too.
A Monkey With A Gun, I hope I am not repeating urban legend but isn’t one form of sickle cell or a single gene from 1 parent supposed to assist or hypothesized to assist with malaria resistance? Because if so I get how odd that quote is and want a pat on the head or something.
Not an urban legend. The the sickle cell gene is a “partial dominant” . Genes aren’t always either / or and I’m going to try to explain this simply, and not completely correct, but give me license for protein mechanics.
The sickle cell gene is a mutation that produces odd proteins shaped like internal barbed spears that jut inward on the red blood cells, which is where the parasite that causes malaria likes to live (it’s not a virus or bacteria - it’s a small eukaryotic parasite.) If you have one of the copies of this gene (sickle cell trait) you have marginal loss in O2 transport, but one hell of a resistance to malaria. If you have two copies, then you have too internal barbs in your red blood cells, they lock together, hemoglobin can’t bind to Oxygen worth a damn, and no O2 flows. Anemia means no O2 flow.
Addendum to above: the internal protein barbs are what makes the parasite have a hard time to breed in people with sickle cell trait. The evil bastard can’t get it’s groove on when it’s in a room full of knives.
But the knives are serrated, and will lock together if there’s too many of them - then nobody’s happy.
If you’re white and going into nursing, you absolutely must not bring any issues, or perceivalbe issues, that may cause racial conflict.
This isn’t because you’ll be working with African Americans, but because you’ll be working with nurses, a bunch of twisted bitches who eat each other alive.
If I may be so bold as to hijack and ask a semi-related question, if you are trying to describe someone is it OK to identify them by skin color?
For instance room full of people and you point Kevin out to some people you are speaking with by saying Kevin is the black man in the blue suit by the punchbowl if there is more than one man by the punchbowl but only one black man? Vice versa where Kevin is the only white guy by the punch bowl.
I don’t know about you, but I call Kofi “Giggle giggle his name means ‘monkey’ in Hebrew giggle giggle”. I am easily amused.
(And for the record, Annan means ‘cloud’).
I’m old enough to have gone through Negro, Colored, Afro American, Black, people of color, African American, and then back to black. It’s tiresome, especially when people who use the old term are deemed insensitive.