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My manager is from Egypt. She is hot. She is an American. She has a slightly olive complexion. No way would she be considered black any more than Cher would be considered black. Her colleague, is black. He's from England. He is not an American. She's an African American. He is not.
No, she is not an African-American; the term specifically refers to black Africans.
Yes, he is an African-American (if, in fact, he is an American - that would depend on his citizenship, perhaps, or his long-term residential status in the United States, neither of which you specify).
African American
noun
1.
a black American of African descent.
It is bizarre how the word 'African-American' causes such a dither among some people, who respond by insisting on defining it by the literal definition of its constituent parts. Anyone even vaguely familiar with English (and, probably, most any language) should know that this is folly. Indeed, you certainly should - since in your post you refer to someone as 'black', even though know no human beings are black. Some are very dark brown, but none are actually black. You also have no problem using 'olive' as a skin tone descriptor, even though most olives - from green to purple to black - resemble the skin tone of no one on Earth.
Which is fascinating - you have no issue with using some words that describe a skin color different than the actual colors those words normally represent, yet you insist on using the literal definitions of 'African' and 'American' and ignoring that 'African-American', like 'black' and 'olive', when referring to race means something other than the words when not referring to race.
Odd. Very odd.
Last edited by Unsettomati; 10-29-2013 at 04:00 PM..
In the early colonial period, white indentured servants and enslaved blacks mingled fairly openly on early plantations. After Bacon's Rebellion of 1676, southern colonies began to place stricter limits on intermarriage. Colonies passed laws banning intermarriage.
In slavery, all children born to a slave woman were slaves, and property of the woman's master. This gave a quite a few masters a perverse incentive to impregnate slaves.
Slave owners had relationships with slaves, ranging from outright rape to (illegal) life partnerships. Vice President Richard mentor Johnson (served 1837-1841) was perhaps the most famous example of a prominent white American who openly had a relationship with his slave, recognized their children as his. Many others were more secretive and refused to publicly acknowledge children.
The French and Spanish influenced cities such as New Orleans along the Gulf Coast had a culture that was especially tolerant of intermarriage. WHile communities of mixed-race Creoles of Color emerged.
After the Civil War, a small number of African Americans and European Americans legally married and had children.
Since the 1960s, this has become more open, and since 1967, legal in all states.
So, basically, despite slavery, segregation, and hostility to interracial relationships from both sides, black and white Americans have been intermarrying for about 400 years.
My manager is from Egypt. She is hot. She is an American. She has a slightly olive complexion. No way would she be considered black any more than Cher would be considered black. Her colleague, is black. He's from England. He is not an American. She's an African American. He is not.
African American was an ethnic term coined in the 1980s because African Americans(descendents of enslaved and free Africans in the US of Black African descent) did not want to be called by terms invented by White people any more. So I use the term to identify my ethnic group and Black to identify my race. It was never created for non Blacks or Blacks from the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, Asia, or the Pacific(they have their own ethnic groups, as they remind us African Americans every time they say "I am Black not African American"-which is fine by me and true). The term indentifies our ethnic group and nationality, and implies our race(one of the Black groups of the US-Black does not always mean African).
It really comes down to a matter of perception. People like Rosie Perez and Daddy Yankee are not regarded as black in the USA because they are of Puerto Rican descent, yet Colin Powell gets racistly one dropped as black by others even though he is of Jamaican descent. The political semantics also slants and influences the way people perceive others and their own look.
That's also a matter of historical timing. Colin Powell entered a largely white field--the Army officer corps--at a time that racism was still running very strong in the Army and Army officers were "not supposed to be" black. He testifies one of his social battles as a young officer was a fight to be permitted to enter the Officer's Club on post which in the late 50s still prohibited black officers.
That prohibition was practiced strictly according to appearance--people like Rosie Perez and Daddy Yankee would also have been barred as a result of physical appearance that suggested any amount of African ancestry.
Only in the 21st century has it begun to matter what the actual ethnic group is, and even then, that's really only among the Millennial Generation.
As a result, persons of Powell's generation who faced those struggles as a result of their physical appearance usually had to identify socially as "colored" or "negro" because that's how society was going to treat them. That situation has been true up through Generation X.
Many slave owners fell in love with their slaves and many slaves fell in love with their masters or owners as well as other slaves and often purchase or but slaves freedom and they fell in live consensually. So there was lots of consensual relations and complex arrangements and circumstances.
According to a genetic study, more than 40% of European ancestry found in AAs comes from European women.
IIRC, Freedmen intermixed quite frequently with White indentured servants especially Dutch female indentured servants during the early colonial period in the North. A lot of European heritage that Blacks possess don't really come from slaveowners but more from white indentured servant/freedmen mixing.
Because many blacks and whites fell in love and had children with each other and different races. There has been so much mixing since the colonial period and even before then.
Most U.S. Americans are mixed race in varying degrees.
IIRC, Freedmen intermixed quite frequently with White indentured servants especially Dutch female indentured servants during the early colonial period in the North. A lot of European heritage that Blacks possess don't really come from slaveowners but more from white indentured servant/freedmen mixing.
Thank you!
I don't know why that's so hard for people to comprehend.
Most of or much of the Africans that came to the colonial new world were Free and were never slaves. Some may have been indentured servants. Africans that had been baptized by others were deemed free before or upon arrival to the New World.
And so many free African men and free African woman each would have children with white and/or European enslaved peoples in the colonies, sometimes often even freeing the offspring they had with the white slaves.
Many black men had children with white women and many black women had children from white men. The same was true of mixed race men and women.
So there was lots of mixing with Irish, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Spanish, German, and other groups.
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