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They do understand it, they're just stirring up trouble. They really don't care what term we use so long as they have a say in it. But God forbid WE make up the term....then it's a problem. (and i'm not talking about all white people...but the ones that play these silly ass games and think they're being slick about it).
And you're right, it has been explained time and time again, which is why it's time to stop explaining. I don't explain anymore. Stopped doing it years ago. I simply tell them if they don't like the term, then go pound sand. But please, leave me alone because i don't want to talk about it. Then i cut the conversation off and keep it moving as if it never happened. I hate to be that way, but i'm not gonna keep playing these bullsh*t games with these folks.
You know DD, you make me laugh in almost every post of yours. Would love to have had an opportunity to know/meet you in life. You are clearly a man that doesn't take any $h!t!
Another C-D race obsessed thread! The term "African-American" was actually created by the Census Bureau in the early 1970s as a way to classify black Americans who for the most part didn't know their true ancestry. Most Americans who aren't black know where they came from hence Irish Americans, Italian Americans, German Americans, even to the point where they even know the cities & towns where their ancestors hailed from and the traditions and holidays stem from.
The only single unifying factor that black Americans have is that they know they came from the continent of Africa and their history to them doesn't start at the shores of Ghana or Liberia but on the shores of slave states in the US.
Blacks in America have been stripped of their identity & heritage and just settle for "well I'm from South Carolina" without taking the time and effort to find out where they truly came from and what a rich cultural legacy they might not be aware of.
Right, but I mean when someone fits in both groups (a Black person who is culturally American).
When all else fails, go with Black. Can't think of anyone who would be offended being called Black. But not all Blacks are AA, so calling them such would be wrong.
That it is hypocritical, and EdwardA has proven it over and over again to be just that. He tries way too hard to separate self from "them". It is how the very premise of this-American and that-American comes about. What is wrong with simply being called an "American"?
When you're talking about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, "American" doesn't suffice. There does need to be a term that refers to the subculture within America that is predominantly made up of people whose ancestors were slaves.
They are Americans - most if not all have no connection with Africa - My parents were born and raised in Russia- I am not a Russo-American...I don't give a damn about Russia.. recently there were riots in Europe...and CNN reported that African Americans were rioting in Europe---what the hell? These people with black skin have never been to America - anymore that our blacks have been to Afirca - forget the distant past and get on with it - these titles devide people.
I spent the first three years of my life in Russia and yet no one calls me Russian American either.
There's no doubt that the standard is different with the term "African American", in terms of how many generations removed Americans here are from their African ancestors.
But it's not our call to make, just like it wouldn't be up to African Americans what we want to be called.
Until you take that DNA ancestry test don't be so confident that your bloodline is entirely African. There are African American men who take the test and find out they belong to a European haplogroup
All that means is that you have one European guy in your lineage. Doesn't mean you're substantially European. If you are an African-diaspora man with a European haplogroup, it just means your dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad......and so on back and so forth, was European. It could be entirely possible that these men could literally have just one paternal ancestor who was European.
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and just because you physically look more African than European, doesn't mean the European ancestry disappears.
That is true. My dad is very much African in appearance, but he has confirmed German and English ancestry. My mom's people are even more mixed up.
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Kinda blows the whole claiming to be "African-American" thing out of the water because when you exalt one side of your ancestry while putting down the other, it makes that person look like a hypocrite.
I don't agree with this in the least. Identifying as African American simply means you are of African ancestry and belong to a culture and come from a history shared with a certain subset of other people of African ancestry whose families have been in this country for centuries.
What it doesn't mean is that you are genetically 100% off the boat from Senegal or Ghana or Sierra Leone, and we never have tried to claim we were.
I acknowledge the - God, I don't know how many European countries appear in my DNA or in my family tree - I acknowledge them but do not identify with them. When I am in Europe or among Europeans, none of them even think to acknowledge me as someone whose ancestors could come from, say, Duntzenheim, France, Baden-Wuerttenberg, Germany or Tuscany, Italy, even though I have traced my ancestors to all of these places. But when I am among Africans, many see the obvious connections. Why would I not identify with them?
When all else fails, go with Black. Can't think of anyone who would be offended being called Black. But not all Blacks are AA, so calling them such would be wrong.
Good to know, cause that's what I've been doing this whole time, lol.
I never call people African American, they are black I am white. I don't see any problems there, it isn't racist ... it is a color of skin. I have many black friends and none of them seem to care. Although, I do call a lot of my black friends African sometimes also, because well.. they're directly from Ghana.
Another reason "African American" doesn't always feel right is because not all Black people are African American. Some have ancestry from the Caribbean, or some continent that isn't Africa. They might identify as Black, but someone from, say, Barbados, is about as African as I am.
Nimchimpsky? If a Barbadian is as African as you are, you must be very African. The vast majority of people in the Caribbean are also of African origins - the Caribbean and South America received millions more Africans in the slave trade than what is now the United States, and the vast majority of Caribbean people are much more African culturally and biologically than the vast majority of African Americans.
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(I was born in Russia.)
Are you from Abkhazia?
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Secondly, not all people of African descent are American. "African American" often gets used as a more PC "catch all" term for "Black". Well, it starts to sound ridiculous when referring to Black people from other countries like the U.K. or Australia, for example.
So, we use the term African American for those of African descent whose families have been in the U.S. for centuries and belong to the distinct culture that was formed here. Pretty simple, really.
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Which brings me to another topic: I use the term Black to refer to people in the U.S. who self-identify as Black. I go to a school for the deaf, and sometimes, during events that are open to the public, we have a sign language to voice interpreter. When I sign "Black", the voice interpreter almost always says "African American." (And it's not like I'm the only one. I don't know anyone who signs "African American.) It drives me nuts. If I said "Black," I want the voice interpreter to say "Black" too. To be fair, they tend to do it with everything. If I sign "wheelchair", they often say something like "mobility device". But honestly, in the process of trying to be more considerate, we lose precision and accuracy ("mobility device" can refer to many more devices than just a wheelchair") and forget to ask the people we are actually referring to about their feelings on what they like to be called.
Most Black people I know call themselves Black. It seems like whoever came up with the term "African American" wasn't thoroughly entrenched in Black culture, or if they were, they were a minority within the majority, where the majority of people just say "Black".
Black is a racial term for people of African (or Melanesian) descent, no matter where they are from around the world. African American is an ethnic term for African descendants from America.
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