It’s not textbook authors, it’s the entire concept of political correctness and hyphenated-Americans. You are only African-American if you hold dual citizenship in a country in Africa and the USA. And it’s plain, damn stupid.
Anyone who makes an issue of skin color in any way is a loser.
Last semester, I took a class on issues of race and ethnicity in urban education. My classmates and I spent the first few weeks completely tiptoeing around both race and ethnicity before I decided that it was stupid. After all, if you can’t discuss race or ethnicity in a class about them, there is a problem. So I relaxed and the rest of my class followed suit. It was actually kind of funny at the beginning.
I have a friend who is from Africa who gets all annoyed with the phrase. She always asks: I’m from Africa, which part are you from?
She always makes me laugh when she does it. (Which also pisses her off.)
Heh, reminds me of freshman year, everyone tiptoed around race during a discussion of Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” Fer fuck’s sake, people.
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?
Because Obama is just African-African --or-- in order to spare the redundancy, African.
In case you’re serious with your answer, which I hope you’re not, you can call him that, but the term “African American” is not interchangeable with black, so it’s goddamn stupid to say sickle cell anemia is most common among African Americans. Whew, so all my black Canadien friends, and my family (not from America; we’re black) can chill out. They have nothing to worry about.
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.
African-American denotes an ethnic group in the US (like Afro-Cuban, Italian-American, Haitian-Canadian). I am not sure what other name would be better, or well-received? “Black” is used to denote an entire racial group (in the US or any other culture that upholds these racial groupings), of which AA make up the majority (but which includes Caribbean/African-Americans) in the US.
If they were referring to American populations “African-American” seems like the correct term to use. Just saying that sickle cell disease “occurs most often in Africans” would just be incorrect as according to this genetic distribution map the most Sickle Cell Anaemia suffers would be in the northern India/AfPak region while Africa (itself) has a drastically wide variation in the population who are affected (which is not limited to, nor all encompassing Sub-Sahara).
Isolating an American ethnic group as people who have a higher chance for carrying the SCA gene doesn’t seem foolish to me.
I think don’t they were trying to refer to a race, nor do I think they should advance that old racial “wives tale.”
WTF, you’re not one of those people who think that Obama is not an America citizen? 
My science teacher, talking about the earthquake in Haiti, and giving us a capsule history of the country, referred to the former slaves there as African American. And this was just after she had said that the U. S., the U. K., and some other European countries had refused to trade with them after they rebelled because they didn’t want to encourage that sort of behavior. I just sat there wondering how they became American if they couldn’t even get America to acknowledge them.
Right, so he’d be Kenyan-American, then. That’s the nation. So, really, the best you can do for any descendant of slaves is “African”? It’s a fucking huge continent. Lumping the entire landmass together and saying, “Look, we’re respecting your origins by calling you African” misses the point that there are many nations now in the places their ancestors came from. And then there’s the problem that these nations were created from former tribal lands. Introduce me as Ashkenazi-American, please. Just fucking say black, like everyone else does.
Don’t you think that if people could narrow it down any further, they would? To answer your question, yes that’s the best that can be done if you want to refer to this specific subset of descendants of slaves. First of all, the slaves weren’t given the opportunity to keep information about their origins intact, and second, the large amount of intermixing between people means that the average African American is going to have ancestors from several of the areas that the slaves were kidnapped from.
The fact of the matter is that in many areas in the U.S., lots of people call themselves Polish or Irish, or Italian or whatever, to give better clues about their family’s origins and culture, and people calling themselves “African American” is the same kind of thing, and none of these usages are probably going anywhere any time soon, no matter how often people whine about it.
Wait. “African” misses the point because it’s too broad a term to cover the huge number of different cultures in Africa. Therefore, we should use black instead? Because it’s… more specific than African?
Anyway, the point you’re missing is that most black people in America don’t know what part of Africa their ancestors were from. They lost their original cultures when they were brought over as slaves, and consequently, formed a new culture that’s unique to North America. It’s absolutely proper to refer to this culture as “African American,” because that’s precisely what it is: the culture developed by American descendants of African slaves. While the OP has a valid point about misusing a narrow term to cover a broad group, insisting that it be discarded in favor of “black” in all instances creates exactly the same problem in reverse: it uses a broad term in instances where a narrower term would be more accurate.
Well, no, I don’t think people would narrow it down if they could, since people who do know their origins (your example, the president) are still called African-American. Personally I find the whole thing kind of stupid. I don’t call myself “Irish-British”. How far back shall I go? Which side of my family should I go with? Should I be “French-British”? And how shall I deal with countries forming, changing, regions wanting their independence or being seen as quasi-independent or as different enough to merit their own description? Am I “Breton-British”? How specific do I need to be? How many of my ancestors need to be from that place for it to be the only other place I list on my stupid descriptor? And what if you’re black and not from Africa? Shall they be “Indigenous Australian-American”? If you then move to a third place, will you be “African-Haitian-Canadian”? It’s just silly.
Miller, no black isn’t a more specific term. It is consciously a term which isn’t pretending to be specific in the way that African-American is. It isn’t pretending to be respectful, like African-American is. And it isn’t willfully inaccurate, like African-American is.
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.
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.
Obama is still a Kenyan-American but he also adopted an African-American identity by marriage (and some say for political reasons). In the end people are entitled to consider themselves as whatever they want.
Boil a cup of tea and calm down. People don’t adopt your personal view point regarding their own personal identities. Why should you care so much? You know, they use the term “black-British” or “British-Indian” over in England too.
I’m sure people will create whatever word they chose to self identify with. English is very versatile (the language not the stiff people).
Jeez, Teacake. Do you really anthropomorphize your lexicon?
“Black-British” - no, not so much, any more. It’s assumed you’re British unless you say you’re not, and the descriptor for a person who is black is just… black. “British-Indian” I have never heard in my life, but if I did it would be from a person who was from India, very specifically. Again, you’re British unless you say you’re not, and most people can tell where you’re from ethnically so people don’t really make a big song and dance about it, unless they’re racists. (As in, someone who would go on about “those Pakis” - and they’re usually wrong about where the person’s origins lie anyway.)
For your information, I felt very calm until you suggested I should boil some tea (which would ruin it), and I am not stiff having had a lovely relaxing bath only a short while ago. I thank you. And I don’t anthropomorphise my lexicon, but I do occasionally imply something, relying on the intelligence of the reader being sufficient to discover it.
The descendants of English settlers in Ireland call themselves “Anglo-Irish”, though, or, in the case of the old English aristocracy in Ireland, “Anglo-Norman”.
But the whole hyphenation thing is an American practice, as immigrants came to America and maintained cultural enclaves.
The categories in the 2001 British census were White, Mixed, Asian or Asian British, Black or Black British, and Chinese or other Ethnic Group, so the terms “Asian British” and “Black British” are still used, even if you don’t use it.
