# If a white South African moved to the USA, would they become African-American?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [May 19, 2016, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194 "2016-05-19T23:24:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/41 "2016-05-21T14:03:44Z")
> [@Ramira](#):
>
> I recall maybe once you even asserted you saw the arab in north africa in this fashion, which from our perspective is weird and silly, but then we do not have this divide.
I don’t recall - I certainly don’t see Arabic as an African language, but AFAIK North Africans are mostly descended from indigenous people, like Berbers or Egyptians, who converted to Islam, so are as African as any Zulu.
> [@](#):
>
> But I see in the Afrikaans they do not use European. They say Blankes, I would guess the exact translation is Europesches, yes?
Europese or Europeër depending on if adj or noun. Which I’ve also seen in apartheid-era signs, but yes, mostly it’s “blankes” vs “nie-blankes” - possibly because the “Afrikaanse” for “African” would just get confusing 🙂
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### Author:  [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/42 "2016-05-21T14:32:17Z")
I know a very nice gentleman who came here from S.A. - after he got his citizenship he joked that he is “African American”. it was obviously a joke, and no one seemed to take offense.
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### Author:  [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/43 "2016-05-21T14:43:52Z")
I don’t think we are going to find the holy grail of defining ethnic identity because ethnic identity is extremely complex and means different things to different people basically everywhere you go. People are never going to fit neatly into universally consistent “native/not-native” slots, because these categories aren’t particularly natural ones.
All we can really do is think of the social reality of ethnic identity, which is again complicated by the fact that a lot of the social reality was dreamed up by people who saw the world through a lens of now-discredited racial pseudo-science.
Trying to come up with clear definitions that will apply neatly everywhere is a lost cause.
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### Author:  [@ctnguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ctnguy)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/44 "2016-05-21T14:49:47Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Not indigineity exactly, just ethnic assimilation.
>
> For instance, in my view, Coloureds don’t really count as African, either - except those Coloureds in the late 1700s-early 1800s who, despite European and Asian origins, assimilated into the Khoisan Griqua tribes. Even though their native language had died out, I still consider _them_ African.
> [@](#):
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> My point is, colonial cultures shouldn’t get the nicety of assigning them names that legitimize their hegemony over the land without question. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed in the name “American” for mainstream American Anglo culture, or "Australian culture, because of the near-complete overlay over native cultures. But here, that hasn’t happened, so when I say “African”, you can read a silent “Native” in front…
>
> Note that this isn’t a value judgement on those cultures - I actively _despise_ a lot of elements of the African cultures, and am very Eurocentric myself.
>
> Nor do I consider those Non-“Native African” cultures to be non-“Authentically South African” in the slightest. Far from it, and possibly a little bit the opposite. There’s nothing more authentically South African than being a melting pot of culture, IMO.
Fair enough. I mean, I think there are contexts in which the ‘Thabo Mbeki “I am an African”’ sense of the word is appropriate. But I wouldn’t argue with your approach in general.
I also wouldn’t quibble with the description of white SAns as “European” in the same sense that Indian SAns are described as “Asian”. However I do take issue when it is used in a delegitimising, “go back to Europe where you came from” kind of way.
> [@](#):
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> That’s not really my experience -
> Most of the European ones I know consider themselves more European than South African (Have you ever been to the German, Italian or Portuguese Clubs?) - _especially_ the Germans (and I have several good German friends). With the Brits, it’s probably a minority that do consider themselves British, not South African, like you say. But culturally, they remain largely Anglocentric.
How old are the folks you know? I’m wondering if it’s a generational thing. As I said my friends (mid 20s to early 30s) think of themselves as South Africans with a convenient EU passport, but I get the impression that their parents identify much more strongly as Italian or Portuguese or whatever.
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Europese or Europeër depending on if adj or noun. Which I’ve also seen in apartheid-era signs, but yes, mostly it’s “blankes” vs “nie-blankes” - possibly because the “Afrikaanse” for “African” would just get confusing 🙂
If I have my apartheid history right, the terminology shifted from “native” to “Bantu” and from “European” to “white” around the early 60s, and then from “Bantu” to “black” around the late 70s.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/45 "2016-05-21T14:58:40Z")
Forget White SAs. There’s a whole slew of non-black North Africans who don’t claim to be African-American if they move to the US. Hows about we get ourselves all butthurt about that???
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### Author:  [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/46 "2016-05-21T15:12:58Z")
I had a white coworker argue with me that our Ghanaian coworker was the only “true” African American in the building. The idea that the guy might actually self-identify as “Ghanaian American” never occurred to her.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/47 "2016-05-21T15:22:28Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> I don’t recall - I certainly don’t see Arabic as an African language,
It is a language that has been in Africa for a thousand years. I do not see why it is not ‘African.’
> [@](#):
>
> but AFAIK North Africans are mostly descended from indigenous people, like Berbers or Egyptians, who converted to Islam, so are as African as any Zulu.
The heritage is without any doubt mixed, There were the Banu Hillal tribal migrations who brought numbers.
I see no reason that they are not African. Backwards applying the concerns of the 19-20 century to other periods does not make sense to me.
[quote[Europese or Europeër depending on if adj or noun. Which I’ve also seen in apartheid-era signs, but yes, mostly it’s “blankes” vs “nie-blankes” - possibly because the “Afrikaanse” for “African” would just get confusing :)[/QUOTE]
the point is there is a difference there on the afrikaans side that is not mere translation I think.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/48 "2016-05-21T15:26:15Z")
> [@ctnguy](#):
>
> Fair enough. I mean, I think there are contexts in which the ‘Thabo Mbeki “I am an African”’ sense of the word is appropriate. But I wouldn’t argue with your approach in general.
>
> I also wouldn’t quibble with the description of white SAns as “European” in the same sense that Indian SAns are described as “Asian”. However I do take issue when it is used in a delegitimising, “go back to Europe where you came from” kind of way.
As would I
> [@](#):
>
> How old are the folks you know? I’m wondering if it’s a generational thing.
30-40(-ish)
> [@](#):
>
> As I said my friends (mid 20s to early 30s) think of themselves as South Africans with a convenient EU passport, but I get the impression that their parents identify much more strongly as Italian or Portuguese or whatever.
Oh, no, it’s certainly not as strong as it is in their parents, but it’s there. Of course, I hang out with a particularly Eurocentric bunch, given my involvement in the SCA.
> [@](#):
>
> If I have my apartheid history right, the terminology shifted from “native” to “Bantu” and from “European” to “white” around the early 60s, and then from “Bantu” to “black” around the late 70s.
The shift from “European” to “White” happened _from_ the 60s but there were still signs using "European in as late as around 1980, I know, I saw them. This would be in Jo’burg, not Cape Town.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/49 "2016-05-21T15:36:17Z")
> [@Ramira](#):
>
> It is a language that has been in Africa for a thousand years. I do not see why it is not ‘African.’
Because it’s an introduced language - Arabic is Asian, French is European - that millions of Africans speak both doesn’t make them “African languages” “Languages spoken in Africa”, sure, but that’s not the same thing.
> [@](#):
>
> The heritage is without any doubt mixed, There were the Banu Hillal tribal migrations who brought numbers.
> I see no reason that they are not African.
Neither do I.
Obviously, there’s a continuum, and the more distant the migration, the better the claim to being naturalized to a place. So I’m not going to go around claiming Germans aren’t Europeans because their culture distantly originates in the Asian steppes (or wherever the IndoEuropean _Urheimat_ is). That would be absurd. But it would be equally absurd to consider people who actively despised the label “African” as _being_ African.
> [@](#):
>
> the point is there is a difference there on the afrikaans side that is not mere translation I think.
I don’t think so. It’s not like the signs were separately written up by an English white person and an Afrikaans white person - one person wrote the text, most probably a White Afrikaner, and _that_ person saw European and Blanke as equivalent.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/50 "2016-05-21T17:14:37Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Because it’s an introduced language - Arabic is Asian
It is Afro-asiatic and has its common ancestor with berber in NE Africa.
‘Introduced’ is a silly idea for a language present in the continent for a thousand years, spoken natively in dialect forms by the majorities in all the North African countries (replacing its cousin berber langauges and egyptian).
my primary dialect in Arabic is not even intelligible easily with the asian arabes, from so many berber features absorbed.
,
> [@](#):
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> French is European - that millions of Africans speak both doesn’t make them “African languages” “Languages spoken in Africa”, sure, but that’s not the same thing.
French is a quite recent import, yes, and it is not really the mother language of any but a small minority.
The general rejection of the African label by the white south africans is the best explanation, not the ideas of introduction.
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### Author:  [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2016, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/51 "2016-05-21T23:15:58Z")
I have danced around this semantic “African-American” bush enough times to get weary of it. Some of it is grammar, some is logic, and not a little of it is thinly veiled racism. If you enjoy the dance, have fun. I’m told some people like to Morris Dance.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2016, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/52 "2016-05-22T12:38:15Z")
> [@Ramira](#):
>
> It is Afro-asiatic and has its common ancestor with berber in NE Africa.
And the Indo-European languages have a common ancestor somewhere outside Europe, doesn’t make the European ones not European.
> [@](#):
>
> ‘Introduced’ is a silly idea for a language present in the continent for a thousand years, spoken natively in dialect forms by the majorities in all the North African countries (replacing its cousin berber langauges and egyptian).
Nevertheless - the language _originated_ outside Africa.
> [@](#):
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> my primary dialect in Arabic is not even intelligible easily with the asian arabes, from so many berber features absorbed.
And Afrikaans isn’t easily intelligible to Dutch speakers, either. Doesn’t really make it not a Dutch offshoot.
> [@](#):
>
> French is a quite recent import, yes, and it is not really the mother language of any but a small minority.
That small minority still represents several million speakers of French as a first language. Lots more than many African languages. So why discount French? And if time since introduction is a factor (as opposed to actual locus of origin) consider Afrikaans has only really been a recognized language of its own since 1925.
> [@](#):
>
> The general rejection of the African label by the white south africans is the best explanation, not the ideas of introduction.
I think they both have importance - there are valid reasons, IMO, for _not_ legitimizing colonial hegemony (such as the Dutch/Boer states) by nativizing it. Marking it as “Other” serves as a reminder of its origins outside the colonized area & gives the lie to the neocolonial whitewashing idea of geopolitical homogeneity. Accurate naming of a thing, the stark reveal of origins, is an act of resistance to any colonialist revisionist claims of having had legitimate authority to conquer - highlighting the alien origins of invader cultures serves as constant reminders of what happened, so that it not be allowed to happen again.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2016, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/53 "2016-05-22T13:09:51Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Nevertheless - the language _originated_ outside Africa.
and bantu originated outside of the southern AFrica.
And?
It is mere historical accident to freeze the analysis.
> [@](#):
>
> I think they both have importance - there are valid reasons, IMO, for _not_ legitimizing colonial hegemony (such as the Dutch/Boer states) by nativizing it. Marking it as “Other” serves as a reminder of its origins outside the colonized area & gives the lie to the neocolonial whitewashing idea of geopolitical homogeneity. Accurate naming of a thing, the stark reveal of origins, is an act of resistance to any colonialist revisionist claims of having had legitimate authority to conquer - highlighting the alien origins of invader cultures serves as constant reminders of what happened, so that it not be allowed to happen again.
So, it is South African politics, not any objective standard of analysis.
the discussion is sterile then, your standard is a political position.
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### Author:  [@DaphneBlack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaphneBlack)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2016, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/54 "2016-05-22T23:36:34Z")
My husband is a white South African, and we are currently living in Europe, but ultimately plan to live (and have lived for a few years) in the US, where I’m from. He would not, even as a joke, call himself African-American.
He has spoken, often, of how the unusual political situation in SA meant that he never felt as if he belonged as a citizen, member, however you wish to term it, of the nation of South Africa. He was born in 1984, so his dislocation is not based on active participation in, or resistance to, apartheid. His family background is somewhat unusual – though he was raised English-speaking, his mother was raised bilingual Afrikaans-English, and father’s parents were German immigrants who fled the Third Reich. Needless to say, this meant that even within ‘English’ communities in SA, he didn’t feel a part of any given group.
He has spoken many times of how he has felt more at home in the USA than he did in his country of birth, or either of the other places we’ve lived (UK and Germany). Part of that, I think, is the diversity of the US is familiar, but he is not overwhelmed with crushing guilt by his very existence there.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2016, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/55 "2016-05-23T05:19:28Z")
> [@Ramira](#):
>
> and bantu originated outside of the southern AFrica.
> And?
And if asked, I’d characterize the Bantu languages as West-Central African in origin.
> [@](#):
>
> It is mere historical accident to freeze the analysis.
It’s not freezing the analysis, it’s highlighting the origination
> [@](#):
>
> So, it is South African politics, not any objective standard of analysis.
> the discussion is sterile then, your standard is a political position.
All positions are political positions.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2016, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/56 "2016-05-23T09:03:40Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> It’s not freezing the analysis, it’s highlighting the origination
no it is freezing the analysis in a point in time based on a frozen moment for a political reason.
Your type of thinking is not that different than the Europeans who refuse the integration of the Maghrebine origin - really the logic does not look very different to me.
> [@](#):
>
> All positions are political positions.
no they are not, but I understand you are a neo marxist so you would believe such things as truths so there is no point in discussing.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2016, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-a-white-south-african-moved-to-the-usa-would-they-become-african-american/755194/57 "2016-05-23T10:29:32Z")
> [@Ramira](#):
>
> no it is freezing the analysis in a point in time based on a frozen moment for a political reason.
All reasons are political reasons. And no, going back to origins isn’t freezing a point in time - like I said, doesn’t matter if it’s 1000 years or 90, what matters is provenance.
> [@](#):
>
> Your type of thinking is not that different than the Europeans who refuse the integration of the Maghrebine origin - really the logic does not look very different to me.
I have no problem with integration - I consider Afrikaners fully integrated South Africans.
> [@](#):
>
> no they are not, but I understand you are a neo marxist so you would believe such things as truths so there is no point in discussing.
I’m not a Neo-Marxist or _any_ flavour of Marxist.
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