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What's kind of funny is some of the posters post kind of as they are an authority. Here's the basic. Africans were brought out of Africa and stripped of their identity. Not by choice. "Native Americans" who were living in the U.S. were conqured but kept a bit of their identity.
So when people discuss the AA verse Black title understand why. Strip a people of who they are one can expect confusion. Toby was Toby not for a minute until his given title was changed to "N". Watch the video to the end.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,935,402 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Caltovegas
What's kind of funny is some of the posters post kind of as they are an authority. Here's the basic. Africans were brought out of Africa and stripped of their identity. Not by choice. "Native Americans" who were living in the U.S. were conqured but kept a bit of their identity.
So when people discuss the AA verse Black title understand why. Strip a people of who they are one can expect confusion. Toby was Toby not for a minute until his given title was changed to "N". Watch the video to the end.
So are you suggesting if Africans, especially black Africans (don't forget, there is that whole part north of the Sahara which also has Africans) came over voluntarily, that then there would be no problem assimilating and not worry about 'identity'?
I wonder oppressed people like the Jews were able to keep their identity over 1000's of years? Pogroms, inquisitions, forced ghettos, etc, yet somehow although their past was destroyed many, many times, they kept their traditions, and verbal history.
Don't tell me that black slaves had it more difficult than Jews. Why was there not an oral history kept? The slave owners did not have to know about that.
Did those white people need to get tested in order to find out their origins? That's the difference.
So I'm bougie and you want moderators to close the thread because a bunch of people don't agree with you? Lol. Do you speak any African languages? Better yet, do you speak any language with a good amount of African words? I could go to the Seychelles Islands tomorrow, not speak English the whole time I'm there, and be fine getting around. Could you? I'm probably more "African" than most people that insist on using "AA".
This whole paragraph, especially the first sentence.
I didn't say close the thread I said be selective because they always come out the same. Someone always brings up Charlize and someone like you don't think you should be called an African. It’s not me you are disagreeing with; it’s the scholarship on the subject. We don't get to chose who we are, history has already done it for us. Perhaps you would be happy with being called a Black-non-African -American. Don't let yourself get old and grey thinking you can just be another "American." If it took 400 years before a black man in America could legally sit down beside a white man and eat a sandwich, don't hold your breath waiting to be seen as just another American. Accept it, embrace it, and move on.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,935,402 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thriftylefty
I didn't say close the thread I said be selective because they always come out the same. Someone always brings up Charlize and someone like you don't think you should be called an African. It’s not me you are disagreeing with; it’s the scholarship on the subject. We don't get to chose who we are, history has already done it for us. Perhaps you would be happy with being called a Black-non-African -American. Don't let yourself get old and grey thinking you can just be another "American." If it took 400 years before a black man in America could legally sit down beside a white man and eat a sandwich, don't hold your breath waiting to be seen as just another American. Accept it, embrace it, and move on.
And amazingly, it that was only 40 years after women got the right to vote. Black males had that right decades before a female of any color of skin. Yet no one says what you did about blacks of women.
Guess your ancestors were never dominated by Mongols? Who raped, killed and enslaved millions. I know, that part of history is suppressed, because it's not PC.
Face it, the institution of slavery, even to this day, is not relegated to just being a black issue. Asians, Caucasians, Blacks, and any other racial group or mixture you want to point at were and still are in some cases victims of slavery.
But what was then was then. My ancient ancestors plight or actions are not who form me or my children. Yes, family history is interesting, and in some cases very interesting, but it does not define me. One doesn't have to be from any particular origin to have gaps in the story. Descendants from Black American slaves have greater gaps than most whites in America, but does it really matter after 150 years? What about 200 years? 300?
There comes a point that the past really is the past. The southern relatives of those that were in the Confederacy really need to get over their issues just as much as the relatives of the slaves they owned. It just doesn't matter in today's world. To attempt to define oneself by what existed generations ago doesn't help. Do we need to learn from those horrible mistakes? You bet! But we should not let that history define US, today. We are better than that.
Well until black Americans are treated equally then we cannot just rug sweep and forget. We are still treated like second-class citizens being brutalized by police with impunity. My blackness affects how so many other people view and treat me and it affects how I experience and view the world.
It is very condescending for you as a non-black person to try to tell a black person how he or she should view themselves.
Again, those percentages are just genes. So what I might ask...
AA culture is nothing like any African cultures. Since you mention music, African music is very different, different rhythms and everything. I hear a lot of African music where I live, it is different from any genre associated with AA's. Dance is also different. Nor do AA's speak African languages anymore.
Just in case you mention chanting during field work in the past, it also exists in rural Portugal, even today.
I think AA's are the least authentic African ones in the Americas. Black people in NE Brazil for instance are a whole lot more African. Same goes for Colombia and other countries in Latin America.
I have a problem with the term identity there. I think it is a problem when people try to invent or cling to a lost identity just because they look similar. AA identity can only be the American one in my view. Now more so than ever. Let me use an example: an AA R&B artist is a whole lot closer to, say, Hall and Oates or Bobby Caldwell than to any African artists.
I am white, I don't cling to any white identity. Both my parents were adopted, I don't even know who my ancestors were, nor do I care. I am who I am as an individual. I look more or less white, but I don't feel like I have a white identity or kind of belong to whites as opposed to blacks or Indians or whoever.
Since modern white people are for the most part good people, I think it would make more sense for AA and white Americans to embrace each other and bring about a new, common American people, instead of looking to another continent that doesn't even care about AA's, nor want them "back". It is not like with the Jewish diaspora, where there is a homeland again and people can move back. That will never happen again with AA's. Liberia was already a giant failure.
Lol. A white person trying to tell a black person about her heritage.
Black American culture has managed to maintain some of its west African roots. Braids, certain dialects, and yes, even music and dance share many similarities. By saying that there are no similarities it just shows how little you know, and I am not in the mood to educate.
Your white heritage hasn't had the same affect on your life as being black has on mine so of course it is easy for you to be arrogant and dismissive about race and identity. I have to work twice as hard as a black woman to get half as much as my white counterparts.
And amazingly, it that was only 40 years after women got the right to vote. Black males had that right decades before a female of any color of skin. Yet no one says what you did about blacks of women.
And yet many were barred from voting booths and threatened with violence when attempting to exercise their right to vote. Or did you happen to forget that detail?
I've only known two African-Americans. One black coworker from Nigeria and one white guy from South Africa.
If you truly knew them you might know what they preferred to be called. The Nigerian might be insulted that you lumped him in together with people in Africa that he may look down on and the white person might be insulted that you think he and black people are the same to you. I could understand that within the context of subjugating African Americans, a white person and two immigrants might be disusing the term though.
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