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I'm African American. Don't give a damn what you are. Don't care about how annoyed you are either.
Africa is a huge continent, where is your ancestry from on the continent of Africa?
You can call yourself anything you want, but when you travel outside of the United States, everyone - and I mean everyone will see you as American first, with African ancestry.
For those of us who are not unfamiliar with the African American experience, we can remember a time when calling another African American black was a for certain way to get into a sho'nuff fist fight. The same can be said for any other period of the political and etymological evolution of African American identity which went from African, Colored, Negro, Black and now African American.
For those of us who are not unfamiliar with the African American experience, we can remember a time when calling another African American black was a for certain way to get into a sho'nuff fist fight. The same can be said for any other period of the political and etymological evolution of African American identity which went from African, Colored, Negro, Black and now African American.
LOL...yea, i remember those days too. We woke up in the 70's though.
This dude referred to me as colored about a month ago. I had to pull dude to the side and give him a 30 second education. I mean, it's 2012...damn.
Don't know. Could easily find out (blood tests are cheap...and fairly accurate). But even if i couldn't find out, so what? What does it matter to you?
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, and just because you physically look more African than European, doesn't mean the European ancestry disappears. 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.
Quote:
Due to joint long histories in the US, approximately 30% of African American males have a European Y chromosome haplogroup. Approximately 58% of African Americans have the equivalent of one great-grandparent (12.5 percent) of European ancestry.
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, and just because you physically look more African than European, doesn't mean the European ancestry disappears. 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.
Whatever. I don't care about any European ancestry that i may have. I have absolutely no interest in it. And even if i took the test and it showed some European Haplogroup, it would change nothing in my own mind. I exalt the side that matters most to me....and it's glaringly apparent what side that is. And i couldn't possibly care less about looking like a hypocrite.
I've been a black man all my life, and all of a sudden, a blood test is supposed to change everything? Get real.
Very interesting read, and I am surprised to see something like that come out of AP. I find incredibly heartening some of the statements, in particular that of Shawn Smith, accountant from TX who says, 'How I really feel is, I'm American.'
I grew up in the 60's & 70's and as a young kid 'Negro' was still used a lot. Some older relatives used 'colored,' always with a tone that to me seemed perjorative. 'Black' was the term commonly used by my elders who seemed to want to convey a sense of respect, so I adopted that term as mine.
Then as time went on, 'African American' came along, and to me it felt manipulative. It was like the Jacksons and Sharptons had come up with yet another way to induce and/or highlight white guilt. So I stuck with the term 'black' and never used 'African American.' Although I'd admit to having used 'African American' once or twice, in 'proper company' situations (as the student quoted well puts it), where I was worried about what the other person might think. But every time I used it, I felt a little silly after.
From what I've read, anthropologists generally agree that all of human kind can trace its origin back to Africa. Aren't all Americans thus 'African American?'
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. (I was born in Russia.) 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.
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".
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