Black or AA? (how much, Pennsylvania, voting, minorities)
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So are you suggesting if Africans, especially black Africans (don't forget, there is that whole part north of the Sahara which also has Africans) came over voluntarily, that then there would be no problem assimilating and not worry about 'identity'?
I wonder oppressed people like the Jews were able to keep their identity over 1000's of years? Pogroms, inquisitions, forced ghettos, etc, yet somehow although their past was destroyed many, many times, they kept their traditions, and verbal history.
Don't tell me that black slaves had it more difficult than Jews. Why was there not an oral history kept? The slave owners did not have to know about that.
Except in Spain for a time, there was no particular effort to remove Judaism from Jews. Kill Jews, yes. Remove their Jewishness and make them something else, no.
The groups of Africans transferred to the Americas, held as slaves or freed at some point after slavery, whose ancestors lived in a Jim Crow social oppression for another century after that, have come to form a fairly distinct people-group with a culture an heritage that is not the same as other Americans and is at least as distinctive as the difference between Mexicans and Spaniards.
The question its self is problematic. In the 80's when the term came about "African American" was term coined by Jesse Jackson to match the new American multi-cultural push of the time. It replaced Black, which itself had replaced Negro. However, the meaning of African American has changed over the years. And that is because the context has changed. Our society is global now.
Against this backdrop the term African American now describes an ethnic group. It refers to the people of African decent who come from the United States. Why the change? Because Jamaicans, Nigerians, and people from many other countries are also Black. But they want to be recognized for their own uniqueness. Personally, I don't get to caught up in either term. But I can see where both have their unique contexts.
And amazingly, it that was only 40 years after women got the right to vote. Black males had that right decades before a female of any color of skin. Yet no one says what you did about blacks of women.
It was 1964 (100 years after slavery ended) when my father was legally able to sit down and eat a baloney sandwich in the break room beside a white man. Voting could still get a black person fired or killed in those days in some parts of America.
It was 1964 (100 years after slavery ended) when my father was legally able to sit down and eat a baloney sandwich in the break room beside a white man. Voting could still get a black person fired or killed in those days in some parts of America.
Oh, heck, the last day I had to sit in segregated movie seating in Oklahoma was July 20, 1969. Schools weren't desegregated where I was until 1967. In '65, rather than desegregate the municipal swimming pool--they simply destroyed it. The filled it in, leaving only a private club pool that could remain segregated. It wasn't until 1973 that they later built another municipal pool...in a predominantly black area of town.
So are you suggesting if Africans, especially black Africans (don't forget, there is that whole part north of the Sahara which also has Africans) came over voluntarily, that then there would be no problem assimilating and not worry about 'identity'?
I wonder oppressed people like the Jews were able to keep their identity over 1000's of years? Pogroms, inquisitions, forced ghettos, etc, yet somehow although their past was destroyed many, many times, they kept their traditions, and verbal history.
Don't tell me that black slaves had it more difficult than Jews. Why was there not an oral history kept? The slave owners did not have to know about that.
How do you know a person is Jewish if they don't tell you? Start there and take a real view of the society and history. Slavery and Jim Crow destroyed the Black family. Yet people think generational damage can be healed overnight. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps.. Research Black Wall Street on you tube.
You could be Japanese American and not speak Japanese or Irish American and never been to Ireland.
African American is simply a label of ethnic origin.
I personally prefer black but I use African American when I speak about the collective. However, one of my biggest pet peeves is that some people have begun to call ALL black people African American even if the people are Afro-Canadian, Afro Latino, etc.
I won't speak to the term "Afro-Latino" but if you live in Canada, African American is still accurate. It is the North AMERICAN continent after all.
This isn't America, or rather its is only a small part of North America. It is the United States of America. "America" or "Americas" still refers to the continent(s), not just this one country.
So are you suggesting if Africans, especially black Africans (don't forget, there is that whole part north of the Sahara which also has Africans) came over voluntarily, that then there would be no problem assimilating and not worry about 'identity'?
I wonder oppressed people like the Jews were able to keep their identity over 1000's of years? Pogroms, inquisitions, forced ghettos, etc, yet somehow although their past was destroyed many, many times, they kept their traditions, and verbal history.
Don't tell me that black slaves had it more difficult than Jews. Why was there not an oral history kept? The slave owners did not have to know about that.
That is EXACTLY what I am telling you - YES, as a matter of fact, 400 years of total and abject slavery was a lot worse than the institutionalized ethnic hatred directed against the Jews during most of the same time frame. We didn't have Jews being sold at auction, routinely raped by their owners, whipped for looking at a "white" woman, or killed for having learned to read or teaching other slaves to read.
I'll give you the Holocaust, but let's not forget the 3 million non-Jews who were also killed in the concentration camps.
I guarantee you there would be VERY few slaves in the post-Columbian world who wouldn't have eagerly traded places with a Jewish person just about anywhere in the world.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
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Originally Posted by TiltheEndofTime
Well until black Americans are treated equally then we cannot just rug sweep and forget. We are still treated like second-class citizens being brutalized by police with impunity. My blackness affects how so many other people view and treat me and it affects how I experience and view the world.
It is very condescending for you as a non-black person to try to tell a black person how he or she should view themselves.
As a person who has physical scars as the result of discrimination, yes, I know a bit about it. My parents were refugees, and I am an immigrant. We were not liked, being called many derogatory names. Yeah, I've lived discrimination, so I think I can make some comments. Was it systemic? Yes, throughout my childhood it certainly was. And for a time being, into adulthood. On the other hand, no, my children are not affected by it.
Are there areas were people of color, and not just black, are not yet fully viewed as equals? You bet there is. But there I'd venture to say that in most of the US that is not the case. Nobody gives a rat's behind what color one's skin is in the Pacific North West, much of the western states, and most of the North East. Even in what was the deep south that is changing, North Carolina certainly comes to mind.
I don't view myself as that son of a refugee, and I don't view myself as that person who often suffered physical harm because of where I came from. That was then, those people were ignorant, some still are, but I refuse to let them define anything negative about me. My children were owed that.
A part of the larger conversation needs to be the number of blacks in particular, and the general population also, that is in prison. The US incarceration rate is arguably the highest in the world, and certainly the highest by far in the free world. That needs to change, and we need to stop stigmatizing young people for incidental use of drugs, especially marijuana. Portugal's system works there, and there is no reason it can't work here.
So, yes, I recognize there are some problems. It is ineffective to lump all issues together as if they all carried the same weight, and it is really ineffective to amplify smaller issues. That just dilutes the effect of highlighting those that must be dealt with.
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