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 have never been able to understand why a people would want to associate themselves with a country that sold them. The folks in Africa sold their brothers and sisters away. The tribes in Africa were warriors, they had to be with the wild animals, etc. Any outsider only survived under the graces of the natives.
Good for those who wish to simply be known as American. I am of German heritage. I don't give a damn what country my great great grand father came from. It has no bearing on who I am, what I am or what I will be. I am an American. I am proud of being an American, although I am embarrassed by our political leaders.
It only makes sense. Black (technically negro) is a race, same as white (caucasian). African-American...a made up term that according to some describes a shared ancestry with those that were brought here as slaves from Africa. Which of course means that in no way is someone like Barack Obama an "African-American" (or even half "AA").
Really? I consider Barack Obama to be a true "African-American" since his mother was American and his father was from Africa. He obviously doesn't have the ancestry of people brought here as slaves, but I consider all those people to just be American. I can understand why some like the term though. What I can't understand is why they aren't kissing the ground thanking God they were born in this country instead (for all I know, they are). There isn't a country in Africa that I would want to live in because of the instability of government.
As for the misnomers and terms of African American (AA) and Black, people need to keep in mind that AA and black do NOT mean the same thing. AAs are an ETHNIC GROUP, NOT a racial group.
AAs are an ETHNIC group comprised of mostly multigenerationally multiracially mixed race (MGM) mixed peoples. AAs can be of any race. Black is more so a sociopolitical term that corresponds to an ethnic like usage in it's semantics. A person is either a member of an ethnicity/ethnic group or NOT. So therefore, one's ethnicity can not be diluted or broken down into fractions. A person never loses membership from an/their ethnic group or ethnicity. You can belong to more than one ethnicity or ethnic group. A person's race or racial admixtures can be broken down into factions or or degrees. So technically most AAs are NOT racially black people. They are all mostly mixed race. Some AAs are racially black, but they make up a minority of the AA ethnic community. And in some cases AAs are and can be white. In fact about 5% of AAs have been found to have absolutely little or NO African ancestry at all. That's because being AA is about a shared experience, having gone through surviving chattel slavery, and surviving Jim Crow and later on the imposition of racist segrationist one droppism and of course the positive uplifting and unifying Civil Rights movement, and thus a unique AA experience.
Last edited by MelismaticEchoes; 01-10-2014 at 07:19 PM..
I did catch it online. I was actually more interested in his maternal line and the fact his family was free as far back as the late 18th century and lived in Virginia to boot which barred free blacks as a matter of law.
The Africa part seemed forced, made for TV if you will. Some random DNA test and presto long lost African family! I was like Blair you better watch what you say to these folks about coming to visit you in the states.
Many of the first Africans to come to the US where freemen, not slaves, and there where no miscegenation laws so many mixed with European descent people. As well as some migrants from the Northern parts of Africa. As free people they also were able to develop and accumulate generational wealth. You see a lot of their descendants in old lineage upper class Black America in New England as well as well as parts of the south with the Gens de Colour. SO you had the dichotomy of the freeman vs. the slave who was brought predominantly from the darker regions of Africa like Angola. And unfortunately this led to a second dichotomy. You had the mulatto and light skinned Black populations that were predominantly lighter (comparatively) and you had the predominantly darker slave populations.
You also had a trend for a while of giving more rights to Indian populations who were comparatively lighter and whose children with Whites were also classified as mulatto in early America. So that added to that dichotomy.
That was the base of colorism.
Add to that, in slavery, contrary to popular urban mythology, it wasn’t being Black that made you a slave; it was who your mother was. Matrilinealism. So, there where many slaves who descended from the Irish slaves that were brought over who were predominantly women. Many slave masters would favor mixed descent slaves, not because of some false Willie Lynch Machiavellian plan, but simply because they resembled them more. Subconscious comfort zones. (Of course, this was not always a bonus. Many times lighter skinned slaves would get the wrath of the female spouse because they were suspected as illegitimate children of the slave master and evidence of his infidelity. Or many times they were victimized as rape victims at higher rates when they were available because they carried trends of beauty that were more Eurocentric as well as Afrocentric trends of beauty.)
I did catch it online. I was actually more interested in his maternal line and the fact his family was free as far back as the late 18th century and lived in Virginia to boot which barred free blacks as a matter of law.
The Africa part seemed forced, made for TV if you will. Some random DNA test and presto long lost African family! I was like Blair you better watch what you say to these folks about coming to visit you in the states.
"Myth 5. Before the Civil War, all African Americans were slaves.*
—*"In fact, about half a million African Americans were free in 1860 and about four million were slaves. The myth supports the notion that African-American ethnic traditions descend from the slave experience. But most of today’s African-American ethnic traits descend from the literate, civically active free Black communities of antebellum Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Such traditions include the AME church, church-centered neighborhood communities, ethnic self-identity and pride, even the term “African American†and the principles of hypodescent and the earliest one-drop rule. Those traditions were forged by such men as: Paul Cuffee, Prince Hall, Richard Allen, Martin Delaney, and Frederick Douglass, of whom only the latter was ever a slave. Many families of the Black communities of the Northeast had no slave ancestry, descending from colonial African indentured servants before slavery (lifelong hereditary forced labor) was adopted in British North America. In contrast, ethnic traditions in the Lower South, where most slaves were, resembled today’s Latin America, where most free citizens were mixed to some extent, almost everyone (slave or free) was of the same ethnic self-identity, and a single sharp color line did not exist."
Same with me. My Father was an Irishman who became an American. I was born in Houston and am no more Irish than a sidewinder.
I think the hyphenated BS is nothing more than a trendy PC way for WASPs to label minorities.
If your father was an Irishman from Ireland you are Irish American to me. Im born and raised in Sweden but moved to the US in 99- . I am now a US citizen. I could rightfully call myself Swedish American and my kids are half Swedish.
I did catch it online. I was actually more interested in his maternal line and the fact his family was free as far back as the late 18th century and lived in Virginia to boot which barred free blacks as a matter of law.
The Africa part seemed forced, made for TV if you will. Some random DNA test and presto long lost African family! I was like Blair you better watch what you say to these folks about coming to visit you in the states.
Do you have any proof that free blacks were barred?
Also his ancestors might have been considered free people of color.
And there are millions of African Americans that have absolutely little to no history of slavery or enslavement in their family trees and family histories and ancestries.
Also many white people were slaves as well as people of other races and race mixtures. Also during the colonial USA and postbellum USA even there was no miscegenation laws and there was no one drop rule at all. Racial classification and perception was based on appearance and lots of societal aspects were based on social class and free people vs slave etc, and that applied to people of all races and racial admixtures.
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.
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.
