I’m fairly open-minded about ethnic labels, but this one always struck me as silly. For example
I think many white North Africans who’ve moved to America check the A-A box. Most may be being “wilfully obtuse” but isn’t it logical? If “black” is the intent why not say so? My ancestors left Scotland more recently than most American Blacks’ ancestors left Africa. Should I call myself Scottish-American?
When I was a teenager, “Black” was the term Blacks allegedly preferred IIRC, and is still the term I usually use. Is this considered wrong or offensive? (I honestly don’t know.)
Funny thing is all the Africans I met do not want to be associated with American blacks. The most vocally anti-black people I have met are from Africa. Purely anecdotal of course.
Hm, 7 syllables which may or may not correctly apply to an individual vs. an equivalent single syllable that describes skin tone and gets the point across without unnecessarily interrupting the larger thought being communicated. Being a white boy I’m sure there’s some desired deference which escapes me that is inherent in clearly pronouncing “African American” as opposed to “Black” or even “black.” But if my opinion counts for anything, I’m all about simplicity. I’m good with “white” when it’s appropriate to address skin color, I don’t see why “black” should be insufficent. Not sure what descriptor to use with Asians. People from India are Asian and they look a lot different from Japanese folks, but somehow I don’t think I could refer to, “that yellow dude over there” with a straight face.
Anyway, I don’t find “African American” offensive particularly, but I find it silly enough to not want to use it.
If someone has bothered to move to the United States and become a citizen, why should they have to continue to identify themselves as “South African”?
Personally, I see very few circumstances where grouping people by skin tone is worthwhile anyway. Culturally, such people may have nothing in common. I know this is not meant to be a discussion of racism, but maybe we don’t actually need terms to describe skin tone groupings.
You asked what term is left, and I offered one. I am not forcing you to use any term. You can use “South African-American” if that is mellifluous to your ear (it isn’t to mine) since it is more analogous to the terms that “African-American” was modeled on, like “Irish-American” and “German-American.” While “Asian-American” seems to be growing in popularity, most of the “hyphen American” designations use the country name, not the continent. Black Americans who are descendants of slaves generally cannot use such a country designation because they do not know their ancestors’ countries of origin. So “African-American” is a claim to a heritage that is necessarily a bit ambiguous but no less for that.
If a person moves to the US from South Africa and doesn’t want “South African” in their claimed heritage, they can say “American.”
As a black person, I say the label African American unnecessary. I think that it is just a part of the growing trend of hyper sensitive trivial political correctness in this country. It’s not about the title as much as it is about the respect that you give me as a man. Black was good enough for MLK Jr. , Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Muhammad Ali, James Brown and countless others who I consider to be great men. If they were called black then I’ll proudly be called black too.
This isn’t age speaking either. I’m only in my mid 30s so I think I’m old enough to respect the civil rights struggle but a few years too young to have participated.
I’m not South African, nor did I claim you were attempting to force any particular term. We can’t all just make up our own personal terms to describe things though. If no one else understands what you’re talking about, what’s the point of language?
I refer to myself as black and never African-American but the term doesn’t bother me. If we are talking in person and you use “African-American” I usually just laugh and say “It’s okay to say ‘black’ instead.”
Off the top of my head, I am having a lot of trouble coming up with one black friend who uses the term African-American in daily speech. The main reason I don’t understand why people get so picky about this term is that I grew up with lots of folks who use labels like “Italian”, “Irish” and “Russian” despite being well removed from those countries. They don’t even bother with hyphens.
I am South African, and I think it’s safe to say that most white South Africans - and certainly those who have moved to the US - know what African-American means and that it would not apply to them.
About 60% of white South Africans are Afrikaans, and the term “Afrikaner-American” is perfectly sensible. For those who are not Afrikaners (or don’t want to identify as such) the appropriate term is probably South-African-American; it’s just a little unfortunate that a two-word country name doesn’t hyphenate well with “American”.
I am oh, so very white and generally I think of African-American as a pretty neutral term. It’s kind of clunky but in historical context it’s a damn sight better than the racial slurs that it replaced. I don’t really use it myself, though. I just say ‘‘black.’’ Racism against blacks, while particularly virulent throughout U.S. history, is hardly limited to this country so I think ‘‘black’’ and ‘‘white’’ is generally a more accurate depiction of the dynamic at play.
And I don’t know if this is going to make much sense… the way I was exposed to the intellectual concept of racism was through the paradigm of a black/white binary. Part of what makes the race problem the race problem is this arbitrary distinction between black and white. I see blackness as sort of more endemic to discrimination than African-ness, per se, because I don’t think bigots really give a shit about their target’s ancestry, they just hate black people for the color of their skin.
I’m white, but this makes perfect sense and is pretty much the way I feel about the term “African American.” I use “black” or “white” or “Asian” or whatever as a descriptor. The black people I know simply call themselves black.
I can’t see how it’s offensive in any way, I just think it’s about as silly as an American whose ancestors arrived in America several generations back calling themselves “European-American” or “Asian American.” It just seems unecessary. Unless you’re Native American, our families all came here from somewhere else one way or another.
And what Frosted Glass said.
I moved here from Scotland in 1979 and to this day when people who have never even been there and aren’t that knowledgeable about Scottish culture say to me “I’m Scottish too!” I roll my eyes, big-time.