Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm of Irish decent. You could send me back to Limerick or Galway based on my mother/father's ancestory.
Ask a self proclaimed "African American" about their African heritage and you most likely get a "deer in the headlights" look from them.
I don't go around proclaiming I'm "Irish American", I say just American.
Don't claim you're "African" American if you don't know that your heritage even goes back to Africa. It's become a loose catch phrase for Blacks that many can't talk to unlike Irish Americans, Japanese Americans, Italian Americans, etc.
Most immigrants from Europe came here freely and stayed in their family units and passed down their family stories and heritage.
Africans in that period did not.
You cannot compare the two..that is not apples to apples comparison.
1. Nonsense. You'd be just as lost in Ireland as i'd be in Nigeria.
2. The same "deer in the headlights" look that you get from most white Americans in this country when referring to their origins? Most have no stinking idea...which is why so many claim dumb s**t like "i'm part Cherokee"...and foolisheness like that.
3. Black folks don't care what you call yourself. That's your business.
4. Who the hell are you to tell African Americans what to call themselves? I'm an African American....get used to it. Whether you like it or not is your business...not mine. What, you're an overseer or something? LOL!
5. What European Immigrants did is beside the point and as an African American, i couldn't care less. Africans couldn't share their experiences, culture, language and such because they weren't the SAME PEOPLE!! They were from different tribes, spoke different languages and had different cultures.
After 241 years they were not culturally African anymore. It took roughly 100 more years before they would be accepted a American. 341 years of limbo is a disenfranchisement period of biblical proportions.
It is in my opinion that the united states would be a completley different place if they had of sent the freed slaves back to there homeland. There should of been a greater effort to keep the two races seperate from eachother, however way you want to look at it, yes it was a great shame what happened, but the headache of it all will not be going away anytime soon, this is not a time for what ifs!!I got my opinion what america would look like if lincoln had not been shot, and if his talks with govenors all down the coastlines had of continued. But I also understand what a kick in the nuts in must feel like to be hearing : oh we just should of sent them back on the slave ships: I would not want to hear that. Now it might of worked a little easier 200 years ago, where groups of africans could make that choice, and have family to greet them, but those days are gone. Thats the worst thing that happened to America is when Lincoln was shot, cause he left a verry important matter of buisness unfinished. And at its core lay the problems of its nation!!!
Sadly, I'm going to have to call this post as I see it... naive.
Perhaps the biggest error is making the assumption that America would have or want ANYTHING to do with blacks the moment they didn't have to see them, which they already didn't anyway thanks to Jim Crow. There is absolutely nothing that suggests America would have even considered going through the trouble of spending the $ to ship them back. Once Lincoln died, that idea died too. And who's to say that the English-speaking black Americans would be welcomed with open arms by the rest of Africa anyway?
I'm of Irish decent. You could send me back to Limerick or Galway based on my mother/father's ancestory.
Ask a self proclaimed "African American" about their African heritage and you most likely get a "deer in the headlights" look from them.
I don't go around proclaiming I'm "Irish American", I say just American.
Don't claim you're "African" American if you don't know that your heritage even goes back to Africa. It's become a loose catch phrase for Blacks that many can't talk to unlike Irish Americans, Japanese Americans, Italian Americans, etc.
Most immigrants from Europe came here freely and stayed in their family units and passed down their family stories and heritage.
Africans in that period did not.
You cannot compare the two..that is not apples to apples comparison.
I claim to be African because I see one when I look in the mirror. I claim American because that is where I was born. Just because I don't know where in Africa I originate from doesn't negate my DNA. You can't tell me whether or not I can claim Africa. Nor can any African, for that matter.
Well, we'd definitely still have NASCAR, Wonder bread, and people with more tattoos than teeth.
Do you like to go off on ludicrous tangents that have nothing to do with the topic of the OP?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.