Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sarafan on July 22, 2009, 12:01:36 am
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Reading the racial profiling thread kinda reminded of this. I just have a question that I always wanted to ask regarding African-Americans, why are they called African-Americans? Why the African part in it? There already has been quite a number of generations since slaves from Africa arrived in the US and I would understand the 1st and 2nd generation after that refering themselves as such but someone from today? It seems completely unnecessary, they're not african, they're americans. By the same logic I could refer myself as African-Brazillian because the whole human race started on Africa.
I'm from Brazil, a country that had a far more worse slavery and nearly half of our population is black and none of the generations today refer themselves as African-Brazillian. I'm not racist, this is simply something that I've always wanted to understand about African-Americans.
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They're not. African-American is one term sometimes used. Black is another. Others have fallen out of favor, by and large.
There are a lot of points made in favor of each term. You can probably find some arguments on blogs about racism, if interested.
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Stricly speaking, I prefer to use the term black. I once saw a movie (I can't remember the name of it right now. dang) about two elderly (as in 100+) black women who had been successful during the heyday of segregation. The journalist interviewing them referred to them as African-Americans, at which point they politely (kind of) chewed her out for it, saying they were American-Americans. It stuck with me.
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African/Asian/German/Martian-American doesn't make any sense as a descriptor of people who are third+ generation Americans.
We use African-American for pretty much all black people, but we only ever use Caucasian/Latin/Asian versions like German-American and Chinese-American for direct immigrants and their children. Even by that second generation, I have a hard time thinking of them as foreign most of the time.
I wonder why we say German-American and Mexican-American but not Niger-American, though. Mm.
Stricly speaking, I prefer to use the term black. I once saw a movie (I can't remember the name of it right now. dang) about two elderly (as in 100+) black women who had been successful during the heyday of segregation. The journalist interviewing them referred to them as African-Americans, at which point they politely (kind of) chewed her out for it, saying they were American-Americans. It stuck with me.
That's part of it, too. But I differentiate between that and direct immigrants and sometimes their children because they tend to also have been born in another country, so it does make sense to reference that part of their nationality, if you're going to refer to them by it at all. Moving to America doesn't instantly erase where you came from.
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Because people are so pre-occupied on not drawing attention to a black person's different color that they forget things like that. For some reason, people feel the need to distinguish.
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The term has always annoyed me for various reasons, I must admit.
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Although, I will admit it is really funny to hear someone refer to a black European as an African-American and then stop halfway through the next sentence when they realize what they said.
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Well, we don't refer to Asian folks as "yellow" no matter how many generations of Americans they come from. They're still "Asian" or sometimes more specifically, "Chinese" or "Korean" or whatever. Latin folks aren't "brown" they're "Mexican" or "Puerto Rican." Though some of them get away with looking like a tan white person.
But saying "African" brings to mind Africa, so I guess we attach -American on the end just to specify.
But if you're white, you get called white.
It's odd how skin color is an okay reference for some and not for others in polite conversation.
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Iamzack, niger-(anything) is only used for people from nigeria. Black isn't exclusive to that one country. Duh. . . .
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It's always struck me as carrying undertones of saying 'This is the cheaper, 1.3 Litre, 2 Wheel drive economy version of an American' for some reason, though, obviously, that's probably more about the way in which it is used than the term itself.
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Dekker:
Actually, Niger is a country separate from Nigeria. A person from Nigeria is a Nigerian. A person from Niger is a Nigerien. So, yeah, I meant Nigerien-American.
Also, it was an example. Duh.
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Great, so I'm stuck between two people who finish their sentences with 'Duh'....
It's like working for local government, all over again.
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Yes, but now someone can unequivocally stop the conversation. Whether he chooses to do so is a crapshoot, though. Especially considering that he's one of them.
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Iamzack, thanks for duplicating my point.
Flipside I know the feeling.
Scotty, i'm so tempted right now. . . .
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Flipside I know the feeling.
Heh, glad I'm not the only one who suffered through that experience ;)
Sarafan's intentions were good, it's not his fault, but I'm wondering if we should keep this to one big thread which can be more easily moderated if need be. This is always a loaded subject, and can result in quite heated exchanges.
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Which, interestingly enough, haven't happened as of yet in this thread. Maybe it's because some major posters who would otherwise aren't here, but the thread isn't looking like a dry pine-forest ready to go up.
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I agree, if only to more easily contain blowout. Could you do the honours though i'm WAP locked at the moment.
For the record i've no problem with anyone's views or posts but that is as always subject to change based on interpretation.
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Ok, I've locked it for now, no-one did anything wrong, but I think we've all been here long enough to know it's only a matter of time until some heavy debate hits the fans, so probably best to keep the number of threads down, else that argument tends to spread to related threads as well.