# I pit the phrase "African American" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 31, 2010, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095 "2010-01-31T07:43:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/61 "2010-02-01T02:59:08Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > 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: I was in grade school when Nelson Mandela took office. My teacher (a white woman) was very excited about this. She told the entire class how wonderful it was that apartheid was finally over and South Africa had elected it’s first _African-American_ president :smack:. I pointed out to her that he was only African, not American. She told me to quite and that I shouldn’t say things like that. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/62 "2010-02-01T03:03:56Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > She speaks truth. Heed her. I meant to address **Slithy Dove’s** post earlier to point out that not only will I be a nurse, I’ll be a _male_ nurse. I am so screwed. ---
**Author:** ![sulamith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@sulamith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sulamith)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/63 "2010-02-01T03:33:44Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > 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. Genuine RN here (white), and this is the dayum truth. That’s why I have escaped into Academia cuz you couldn’t pay me enough money to work with that pack of braying hyenas. Been there, done that. Since I now teach a University course on Cultural Diversity in Healthcare to future nurses, I have found it is easy to lay everything right on the line the first day. To hell with dancing around the obvious. We go through all of the labels that have been put on any group in America over the last two hundred years. Many of my young black students prefer the term “black” and find AA to be old and out-dated, so they tell me. And while we are at it, the term Caucasian is about as inaccurate and stupid a descriptor as it gets, too. For one thing the Caucasus mountains are in Eurasia, and second, a large percentage of white Americans descend from various Celtic tribes that splintered into other groups through the centuries, so how is that Caucasian? Did the Celts originate in the Caucasus? I am seriously asking. I thought it was mainly the Mediterranean cultures that descended from Eurasia, and the Celts were distinctively different from the Greco-Roman-Arab-Egyptian world. I am of pure Irish descent, and that’s pretty doggone far from the Caucasus mountains…I feel no connection to that, so when I hear that term applied to me, I have the same reaction as the black guy who said he is not from Africa and doesn’t want to go there, and doesn’t want to labeled as that. And speaking of those little census boxes, I recently read that people from the Middle East are counted as “white”, which really does make sense, because if anyone is Caucasian, Middle Easterners are. Also, why force biracial people to check a box called “other”? Why do we even need the term biracial anyway? I like the way the ancients defined race…that anyone who shares common language, diet habits, clothing habits, health practices, and religious habits is considered to be of the same race. So by that definition, all of us Americans who wear blue jeans, speak English and eat fast food are all of the same race, yay! Bottom line, for me, I find all these labels pretty cumbersome, and they don’t really say anything about us as Americans at all. Especially as more and more time goes by. Maybe one day we will get over our need to label each other and won’t need them anymore. ---
**Author:** ![sulamith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@sulamith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sulamith)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/64 "2010-02-01T03:49:10Z")
> [@A Monkey With a Gun](#): > > I meant to address **Slithy Dove’s** post earlier to point out that not only will I be a nurse, I’ll be a _male_ nurse. > > I am so screwed. Yes, you are. Hijack: Your only hope is to stay in the ER, OR, or ICU where you can find more of your own kind. But it is not just the other nurses that will vex you. The patients ain’t always a walk in the park, either. What always puzzled me were the ladies in their 80s who were sure that the male nurse is a perv who is just waiting for the chance to get off looking at their wizzened old poons, but let the male doctor come in the room and they stick their feet in the air for him to see way more than he ever wanted to like that was totally different. I hate to break it to them, but my best guess is that there are waaaay more pervy male doctors than male nurses. When they would cower in the bed and say, “Ew, I don’t want that male nurse in my room!” I would say, “Honey, he doesn’t want to look at you any more than I want to look at 87-year old Mr. Taylor over there.” Alot of double standard in the nursing world. End Hijack. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/65 "2010-02-01T03:49:14Z")
> [@A Monkey With a Gun](#): > > I meant to address **Slithy Dove’s** post earlier to point out that not only will I be a nurse, I’ll be a _male_ nurse. > > I am so screwed. Not really. Male nurses tend to be treated better by management and by most of their colleagues. 'Ware those nurses who want to flirt with you/harass you/hold you responsible for their misanthropy/think you’re there to move their pts for them etc, though… I got (get, I’m still a nurse) along fine with most of the male nurses I worked with. And welcome to the field! We need you. ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/66 "2010-02-01T04:19:59Z")
Just so everybody knows, “I’m screwed” was just a joke. I know damn well what I’m getting into. I want to do it anyway. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/67 "2010-02-01T04:23:49Z")
> [@Omega\_Glory](#): > > The people who call the president African American do so because they’re the sort who think all blacks in America should be called AA, but that is never what the term was meant for. It was always meant to refer to the people who couldn’t be more specific because their family history that dated before their arrival to the U.S. had been erased by slavery. The people like Obama whose black relatives aren’t American have a separate, although possibly intertwined, culture than the blacks who are descended from slaves. In my area, the northeastern part of the U.S, up until recently, a lot of people were still living in segregated neighborhoods, so people were able to retain some of the values of their ancestors’ original country, while adopting some others, and those people still refer to themselves as \_\_\_\_\_ - American. That’s really all it is. If that’s not what people do in your area, then fine, but that’s not the case everywhere, and it’s not harming anyone except those who want to make a big deal out of it. > [@Omega\_Glory](#): > > Too late to edit it in: > African American is quite specific. It means black American descended from slaves that were brought to the United States from certain areas of Africa during a certain time period, slave owners, and possibly Native Americans/American Indians. No, it doesn’t tell you exactly where they came from, but it’s not a confusing catch all unless you want to make it that way. I sympathize with your perspective, but unless you can provide documentation from the late 1960s (when it first appeared, only to disappear again), or from Jesse Jackson’s press conference in late fall or early winter 1989, where he resurrected the term and gave it his _imprimatur_, I am going to disagree that it was ever explicitly intended for anything so narrow. I don’t recall the 1960s discussions clearly, but I do not recall that claim. Jackson made an explicit link to Irish-American and Polish-American and the need/desire for blacks to be treated and identified in the way their neighbors were identified, but I do not recall him claiming that only the decendants of slaves were eligible to use the term. ---
**Author:** ![sulamith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@sulamith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sulamith)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/68 "2010-02-01T04:23:55Z")
> [@A Monkey With a Gun](#): > > Just so everybody knows, “I’m screwed” was just a joke. I know damn well what I’m getting into. I want to do it anyway. 🙂 I hope you took my response with the humor I intended as well. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/69 "2010-02-01T05:02:07Z")
Is there anyone in this thread who is black who minds being referred to as black? African-American is the dumbest thing to come out of political correctness. EVERY black person is NOT African-American. And if a black person can call me white, (which they do), I can call them black (which I do). Everyone I know that is black could care less. I saw a black comedian (can’t remember who) who does a bit on this. He said the first time he went to Africa, he realized he wasn’t African at all. He was American. If you are born here, that’s what you are. An American. If you want to celebrate your heritage, by all means do so. But for crying out loud… why do we have to hyphenate everyone? Black people know they are black, guilty white people! Calling them African American doesn’t change that! Why can’t white america let this go? ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/70 "2010-02-01T05:16:15Z")
I find it interesting that when I said I didn’t understand and didn’t really like the hyphenated labels, I got called a racist, yet here we are on page two of people with that same opinion and no one yells. I guess the right audience is always the most important… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Omega\_Glory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7c8e57/32.png) [@Omega\_Glory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omega_Glory)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/71 "2010-02-01T05:37:21Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > I sympathize with your perspective, but unless you can provide documentation from the late 1960s (when it first appeared, only to disappear again), or from Jesse Jackson’s press conference in late fall or early winter 1989, where he resurrected the term and gave it his _imprimatur_, I am going to disagree that it was ever explicitly intended for anything so narrow. I don’t recall the 1960s discussions clearly, but I do not recall that claim. Jackson made an explicit link to Irish-American and Polish-American and the need/desire for blacks to be treated and identified in the way their neighbors were identified, but I do not recall him claiming that only the decendants of slaves were eligible to use the term. That’s the way I’ve always understood it, and it’s possible that Jackson had something different in mind. I’ve done a bit of searching and see bits of speeches where he referred to descendants of slaves, while trying to gain support for the term, but haven’t seen any where he talked about immigrants being along for the ride yet. > [@](#): > > ‘‘There is no cultural integrity in skin color,’’ he says. ''The African roots of American culture are substantial. If we were going to teach history, Western civilization, we must tell the truth. > > ‘‘In our history books, there is a tremendous denial of the tragic truth of the slave trade. People tend not to know, to wipe it off. We are the living descendants of this massive dislocation of people. There is a grand deletion of our history as Americans, a gaping hole in our culture. Others came to drop their chains; we were issued chains on arrival.’’ > > He notes that during the election campaigns, TV profiles of the candidates traced them back to the village of their forebears - Ronald Reagan’s in Ireland, George Bush’s in England, Michael Dukakis’s in Greece. ‘‘With me, it was just to South Carolina, as though we started there.’’ > > ‘‘There is such despair in our children, so much dope, crime, self-destruction, such aimlessness. They feel so unimportant to themselves. We must attempt to lift our children by the power of their culture.’’ [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/11/opinion/foreign-affairs-jackson-as-african-american.html?scp=2&sq="african+american"+jesse+jackson&st=nyt](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/11/opinion/foreign-affairs-jackson-as-african-american.html?scp=2&sq=%22african+american%22+jesse+jackson&st=nyt) This, for example, seems focused on explaining why the descendants of slaves need this term, which doesn’t necessarily mean no one else can use it, but several of the issues he’s talking about really don’t refer to the children of African immigrants. ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/72 "2010-02-01T05:38:20Z")
> [@curlcoat](#): > > I find it interesting that when I said I didn’t understand and didn’t really like the hyphenated labels, I got called a racist, yet here we are on page two of people with that same opinion and no one yells. I guess the right audience is always the most important… 😃 You said Michelle Obama looks like a monkey, you fucking moron. That’s the difference. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/73 "2010-02-01T05:48:34Z")
> [@Dervorin](#): > > Here in the UK, everyone I know who is black refers to themselves as black. It’s certainly not impolite. No, I know at least one person of that ethnicity that sez “I am not BLACK, I am a mocha\* colored woman”. So, there’s _no term at all_ that _someone_ isn’t unhappy with. - or Cafe au lait? ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/74 "2010-02-01T05:57:59Z")
> [@A Monkey With a Gun](#): > > You said Michelle Obama looks like a monkey, you fucking moron. That’s the difference. I rescind that completely. Now that I look it up, you never said anything wrong in the Michelle / monkey thread. But nobody called you a racist in that thing either. So, **curlcoat** , who called you a racist? Get off the cross and tell me who called you a racist. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Scrappy\_Hero\_Pup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ea5d25/32.png) [@Happy\_Scrappy\_Hero\_Pup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Scrappy_Hero_Pup)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/75 "2010-02-01T06:00:03Z")
[QUOTE= psychonaut] 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. [/QUOTE] I know I’m late to the party, but I just wanted to point out to **psychonaut** that [Black Vulcan](http://www.seanbaby.com/superfriends/bvulcan.htm) was already taken. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/76 "2010-02-01T06:32:56Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > If I can call Nancy Pelosi Italian-American, and I could call Ted Kennedy Irish-American, why can’t I call President Obama African-American? > [@MeanOldLady](#): > > Because Obama is just African-African --or-- in order to spare the redundancy, African. > [@Omega\_Glory](#): > > Why not refer to his relative’s country of origin, the way you’d like to with Pelosi and Kennedy? > > I don’t see why people keep making a big deal out of the term. African American doesn’t fit for the passage in the OP, but there may sometimes be reasons to refer to the people or the culture of the people whose ancestors came from a specific region, and African American is the best we can do for those blacks who are descendants of American slaves, and slave owners. > [@Teacake](#): > > Right, so he’d be Kenyan-American, then. Look folks, you’ve all been ignoring Obama’s impressive pedigree going back to the Mayflower of Plymouth Rock fame. That makes him an English-American as much as a Kenyan - American. A European-American as well as an African-American. A white man as well as a… Oh wait, scratch that. ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/77 "2010-02-01T06:46:35Z")
> [@Omega\_Glory](#): > > \ > This, for example, seems focused on explaining why the descendants of slaves need this term, which doesn’t necessarily mean no one else can use it, but several of the issues he’s talking about really don’t refer to the children of African immigrants. Oh, for crissakes… just to make sure we set them apart, can we call them Ex-Slave-Americans? I wouldn’t want to include just any old black person. Especially a child of an African immigrant (who in my estimation is more African-American than any descendant of a slave). ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/78 "2010-02-01T08:12:20Z")
> [@Omega\_Glory](#): > > That’s funny. I wasn’t white last year, and wasn’t white four days ago. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Now that you mention it…you could use a little more sun. Odesio ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/79 "2010-02-01T08:26:57Z")
I’ve never run into any blacks in the academic world that had a problem using African American. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but, assuming they do, I’ve never run across them. I don’t have any big problem with the term African American though it can be unwieldy at times and as others have pointed out it can also be misused. However it’s an excellent word to use when describing blacks in American history. I can speak about African American culture (yes, they have their own culture) in a way that I cannot talk about black culture. There is an African American culture and history. There’s not really a black culture, because, as others have pointed out, Africa is a big place full of all sorts of different people. In short, African American is a useful term even if it’s not 100% precise in all situations. Odesio ---
**Author:** ![irishgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@irishgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irishgirl)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2010, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095/80 "2010-02-01T11:20:14Z")
To the OP. I agree wholeeartedly about the textbook. A better, more precise way of phrasing it might have been: “Sickle-Cell anemia, which occurs rarely in Caucasians, is a genetic disorder. As it derives from an evolutionary defence against malaria it is, however, relatively common in populations exposed to malaria and their descendants.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-phrase-african-american/527095.md?page=5)