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 don't think I've ever heard the term "English-American". Why do you suppose that is? Is that somehow the default, so everyone else needs to hyphenate?
Most of the hyphenated groups struggled when they first came to America, often accused of stealing jobs from "real Americans"--immigrants who got there earlier.
As each new wave of immigrants came, the previous wave treated them as badly as they had been treated. Signs like "No Irish need apply" were common in some places.
As a result, immigrants from a particular place banded together to support each other, forming Irish (or Italian or Polish, etc.) societies.
Maybe "Mix Plate" is a better term than melting pot. Hawaii also had waves of imported workers. They would bring their lunches from home, and try out each other's cuisines. Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and more all contributed to what's now famous as Hawaiian food. Two scoop rice, mac salad, teriyaki chicken!
I am very tempted to engage in depth on this subject, but since it is outside of P&C, I will not risk running afoul of more stringent rules here vs. over there.
That said, historically speaking, calling anyone a hyphenated-American was considered an insult, implying native born Americans were more American than the legal immigrants.
Don't believe it, read Teddy Roosevelt's thoughts on the matter;
Teddy Roosevelt: "No Room in This Country for Hyphenated Americans"
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated
Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever
known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an
American at all."
"This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German
or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul.
Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who
holds any other allegiance."
"But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as
good an American as anyone else."
"The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its
continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities,
an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans,
Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart
feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American
Republic."
"The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there
ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who
yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly
mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the
land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American."
Theodore Roosevelt
Address to the Knights of Columbus
New York City- October 12th, 1915
It seems the term "African-American" became more and more popular as a substitute/PC term, instead of using "black".
I never thought it had anything to do with ancestry, just people trying to find an alternate replacement for saying black, because some people felt uneasy saying black.
Correct. "Black" or "Negro" (this was a politically correct term back in the day) were deemed too "offensive." "African American" was simply a replacement as a "more correct sounding word" than the former terms.
Technically, "African American" is 100% incorrect. The more accurate term would be "Sub-Saharan African American " or "Western African American."
But from a common sense standpoint, black Americans should only identify as "American" as race is not a "protected class" because race is only a social construct.
The same can be said for "Asian Americans, Arab Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jewish Americans, etc." these are all Americans that we decided needed special treatment with special names.
Other countries cannot comprehend that "Blacks" can be "American." They believe all blacks in a 1st world country must be immigrants from a sub Saharan African country. But that's off topic, my point is that blacks should only identify as American.
Each year in my school we would have a Back To School Night in mid-September. And, as principal, one of the things I was supposed to address in a meeting before the parents went off to visit their children's teachers was our state standardized test scores. As I was discussing the scores for about 5 minutes, I touched on the fact that the scores for our "Black" students were somewhat below the scores for our "white" students, but that we had made steady progress in closing the gap over the past several years. A white parent stood up and said, "Shame on you, Mr. Victor. You should be calling them African American students". A Black mother stood up and angrily said, "Leave Mr. Victor alone. Some of us in this school are still citizens of African countries and we are here on visas working. We are not African Americans. We are Africans. So Mr. Victor is right to call us "Black"".
I've seen another debate that is very related to this one. Someone criticizing that Blacks today seem to want to be separate...and they shouldn't want to be separate from the mainstream culture. And as I pointed out, for several hundred years you FORCED them to be separate, forced them into different housing, forced them into separate schools that were NOT separate but equal, called them all sorts of negative names (such as the N word), gave them much poorer medical care, and even lynched them. And after all that separating that you did, now you're angry that they don't want to hang around with you.
The inequality that Blacks suffered for HUNDREDS of years in this country was a major factor in bringing about the widespread use of terms like "African American" because we had to address legal issues when our Constitution finally forced white Americans to address the grievous way in which Blacks had been treated for generation after generation, and terms such as African American were used to measure whether or not the problem was being addressed. Additionally, there are people -- including people I know personally -- that want to address their roots, whether it be African American or Irish American.
It seems to me that some groups of x-Americans can't win.
I touched on the fact that the scores for our "Black" students were somewhat below the scores for our "white" students, but that we had made steady progress in closing the gap over the past several years. A white parent stood up and said, "Shame on you, Mr. Victor. You should be calling them African American students". A Black mother stood up ...
The difference in your capitalization usage here keeps the gap wide open.
AP style guide started doing this a few years ago, where we now predominately see mainstream news articles using Black with a capital B, followed by a lowercase white.
One of my work colleague's parents is Jewish, the other of French derivation. Same question. Does either affect what professional or life choices they made? Or what they bring to the table?
This^
Who you are is very important to you and everyone benefits from knowing as much as possible about their family history.
But I don't think it is necessary for someone to know "who" you are to appreciate and accept you.
Don't bother to tell me who you are. That is how you want me to see you but I can figure it out by what you do.
I've seen another debate that is very related to this one. Someone criticizing that Blacks today seem to want to be separate...and they shouldn't want to be separate from the mainstream culture. And as I pointed out, for several hundred years you FORCED them to be separate, forced them into different housing, forced them into separate schools that were NOT separate but equal, called them all sorts of negative names (such as the N word), gave them much poorer medical care, and even lynched them. And after all that separating that you did, now you're angry that they don't want to hang around with you.
The inequality that Blacks suffered for HUNDREDS of years in this country was a major factor in bringing about the widespread use of terms like "African American" because we had to address legal issues when our Constitution finally forced white Americans to address the grievous way in which Blacks had been treated for generation after generation, and terms such as African American were used to measure whether or not the problem was being addressed. Additionally, there are people -- including people I know personally -- that want to address their roots, whether it be African American or Irish American.
It seems to me that some groups of x-Americans can't win.
In the late 1800's and early 1900's such blacks as George Washington Carver walked for miles to get an education. People, including him, put it to excellent use, that benefited all people. Blacks, through the 1950's and 1960's appropriately marched, sat in for, and actively sought inclusion.
Can people of all colors post what they want? Inclusion? Or separation coupled with advantage?
Last edited by Mike from back east; 01-07-2024 at 11:13 PM..
Most Blacks today, even the boomers are far removed from Africa, with over 150 years passing since the last slaves were brought over. My father came over from Portugal at age 3 in 1922, and I don't identify as Portuguese American. Like most Blacks living here I was born in the USA so I am an American. One co-worker came here recently from Nigeria, she could truly qualify as African American but doesn't.
Right.
It's American thing, although most Black people who identify themselves as African Americans are born in the US.
There are Black people in every continent who are all over the world, but
I never heard about Black people in Europe identifying themselves as African German, or African Italian etc.
I think that in the US many people often default to "African American" out of a desire for either political correctness or politeness. Even Blacks from other countries like Jamaica are called African Americans.
I think that "Black" is a better default that recognizes and celebrates the race, culture, and lived experiences of people all over the world.
"African-American" is just a colloquialism. It doesn't have to be all inclusive because you still know what it means when you hear it, unless you're playing dumb. People that are actually from Africa do not call themselves AA and will instead identify with whatever country they're native to.
And the U.S. is not even close to being the only country that does this. Lots of places have their own terms for subgroups or subcultures within their borders.
I just wonder how much of this sort of "debate" is not so much a matter of what Americans of African descent should "identify as"... It's more a matter of, "what should white people call this group when we talk about them?"
What are we "allowed" to say?
What is the appropriate term that is respectful?
It keeps changing, and we keep feeling flustered when we are unsure.
There are talks out there about why this happens. Why a term for a marginalized group eventually becomes seen as a slur and a new term arises, then eventually THAT is seen as a slur...
And it's not as much a matter of any given composition of mouth-noises, the words themselves. It's a matter of the spirit and intent with which the group in a position of greater relative social power uses those words, where one may say "American" and the image that comes to mind is the default, and the default is...white. We can say, "the black community" but we don't say, "the white community" do we? Why do the words end up seen as slurs, and new words take their place, well, perhaps only when they are used enough with the intonation and intent of being slurs.
Maybe the thing to contemplate is not what term is OK for white people to use, to refer to this or that group, but why we are referring to them in the first place, and what it is we're saying? The spirit...the intent...?
When I was a kid, I overheard my grandfather say some awful, racist things and I remember thinking that well...he was old, he grew up in a different time, in a different America. When old guys like him all died, there would be no more racism. What a precious, naive thought, huh? But maybe that's how we will know when it's really done, when the NEED to keep replacing words that have come to feel like slurs, goes away.
I guess it's easier not to experience that particular white discomfort about "what if I say the wrong word in front of this or that person"...if you just treat people of different colors and ethnicities as simply people instead, rather than avatars or representatives of their "kind." See a person's humanity first, and they'll tell you what they want you to know about their own identity as you get to know them? It's not a matter of being color-blind exactly, it's more like giving the same weight to it as a white person meeting another white person would give to eye or hair color...not making assumptions about what kind of a person they are, or what their life is about, or anything.
To the point...labels or aspects of identity that a person tells you, apply to them, that they have embraced and embody, are valid, and respecting them is respecting that person. You don't HAVE to, but if you don't, you are not being respectful. It's that simple.
Whereas the labels that some person or group wishing to have power or authority attempts to impose ON a person, one's efforts to enforce another person's identity based on whatever...that is not only disrespectful, it's violating. It is a claim of authority over someone else that none of us are granted.
And I think that the desire to impose objective means of "sorting" on people...that is out of their own power or control...THAT is where we get into divisiveness, of a destructive sort. I mean, when you think of the notion, "I should be able to look at you and see whether you are of my kind, my class, or another kind, and therefore how I must treat you, how you should be expected to act, what rights and privileges you have, etc"... That's not very American, I don't think. That's more of a caste system. I guess it benefits those who are really attached to the concepts of strict social hierarchy and some people being better than others, but I think that this is one of the differences between a primitive, warlike, fear driven mindset, and one that desires to see humanity evolve to coexist more peacefully in the world.
So. As such, I won't be telling any group of people what they "should" do. I'll use the terminology I've been asked to use, unless and until I am asked to use something different.
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.
