"I'm not African-American"

**RichD** · 02-07-2012, 10:44 AM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body">[ and Boers, Rhodesians and their ilk want to be called African?

</div></div>
interesting ..i did not know that.

They don't refer to themselves as "south African" etc?

**kia027** · 02-07-2012, 11:00 AM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

I dont like being called African American because it denies my Jamaican heritage therefore I will prefer being called black or Jamaican. I have not heard many people describing themselves as Jamaican-African or African Jamaican. I think it is due to the fact that the default & dominant race is black.

Just like Jamaicans who are not black will say they are Jamaican-Chinese, Jamaican-Indian, or Jamaica-white

**kia027** · 02-07-2012, 11:02 AM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Peasie</div><div class="ubbcode-body">A friend of mine was living in Brooklyn in the years before the 1980 census. When he responded to the race question, the census-taker told my friend that was the first of the many Jamaicans in the building who chose "black" as their race. Is what dem was so fraid of? </div></div>

I think it was the association with black americans whom jamaicans viewed with some disdain at the time. you know the stereotypes.. look at all these jobs, we can get and have 3 jobs and u noh have none. These attitudes changed as the children of Jamaican immigrants were raised in the US and experienced growing in a culture where they were a minority group and treated unfavourably.

**Magician** · 02-07-2012, 11:25 AM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: J kid</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Soh di Whites whe bawn inna Afrika are called what? Also, di Whites born inna Afrika an come tuh say, di USA an get citizenship are called what? </div></div>

Whites born in African are still considered racially whites and as such are not African.
African and European denotes ethnicity not nationality (they are exceptions)....hence depending on where in Africa they are from they will be given that national appellation. </div></div>

You can call them whatever you want call them and they will still call themselves whatever they like to call themselves.

**evanovitch** · 02-07-2012, 11:38 AM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: J kid</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Mi is very comfortable wid di word "Black". However, many A.A. are not. </div></div>

Me too... Always seh mi black n mi nationality is Jcan....

**queenb** · 02-07-2012, 01:07 PM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: J kid</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Soh di Whites whe bawn inna Afrika are called what? Also, di Whites born inna Afrika an come tuh say, di USA an get citizenship are called what? </div></div>

Whites born in African are still considered racially whites and as such are not African.
African and European denotes ethnicity not nationality (they are exceptions)....hence depending on where in Africa they are from they will be given that national appellation. </div></div>

I don't think that the designation is racially oriented at all. Italian-Americans are called that; and "Italian" does not mean a racial group. The South African actress, Charlize Theron, calls herself African-American, and proudly I may add.

**franksterr** · 02-07-2012, 02:36 PM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: queenb</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: J kid</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Soh di Whites whe bawn inna Afrika are called what? Also, di Whites born inna Afrika an come tuh say, di USA an get citizenship are called what? </div></div>

Whites born in African are still considered racially whites and as such are not African.
African and European denotes ethnicity not nationality (they are exceptions)....hence depending on where in Africa they are from they will be given that national appellation. </div></div>

I don't think that the designation is racially oriented at all. Italian-Americans are called that; and "Italian" does not mean a racial group. The South African actress, Charlize Theron, calls herself African-American, and proudly I may add. </div></div>

Italian is not a racial designation but a national one.....White and European are racial (ethnic) designations.

Nobody in America will mistake Charlize Theron for an African nor will she suffer the bigotry Africans endure in America daily.

When it comes to race you can call yourself whatever you please but you not fooling anyone but yourself as with one look people will categorize you wrongly or rightly depending on the society you are in and their definition of race.

**franksterr** · 02-07-2012, 02:41 PM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: xigaM</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: J kid</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Soh di Whites whe bawn inna Afrika are called what? Also, di Whites born inna Afrika an come tuh say, di USA an get citizenship are called what? </div></div>

Whites born in African are still considered racially whites and as such are not African.
African and European denotes ethnicity not nationality (they are exceptions)....hence depending on where in Africa they are from they will be given that national appellation. </div></div>

You can call them whatever you want call them and they will still call themselves whatever they like to call themselves.

</div></div>

That is true.
Depending on where they are, the media will label them according the mores of that society. That too is true

**Xavier** · 02-11-2012, 01:00 PM

Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American'

Do you agree with this? I have been fighting this battle myself. I prefer to be called Black.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American' </span>
We respect our African heritage, but that term is not really us,' says one
By JESSE WASHINGTON
Source:MSNBC

The labels used to describe Americans of African descent mark the movement of a people from the slave house to the White House. Today, many are resisting this progression by holding on to a name from the past: "black."

For this group — some descended from U.S. slaves, some immigrants with a separate history — "African-American" is not the sign of progress hailed when the term was popularized in the late 1980s. Instead, it's a misleading connection to a distant culture.

The debate has waxed and waned since African-American went mainstream, and gained new significance after the son of a black Kenyan and a white American moved into the White House. President Barack Obama's identity has been contested from all sides, renewing questions that have followed millions of darker Americans:

What are you? Where are you from? And how do you fit into this country?

"I prefer to be called black," said Shawn Smith, an accountant from Houston. "How I really feel is, I'm American."

"I don't like African-American. It denotes something else to me than who I am," said Smith, whose parents are from Mississippi and North Carolina. "I can't recall any of them telling me anything about Africa. They told me a whole lot about where they grew up in Macomb County and Shelby, N.C."

Gibré George, an entrepreneur from Miami, started a Facebook page called "Don't Call Me African-American" on a whim. It now has about 300 "likes."
Advertise | AdChoices

"We respect our African heritage, but that term is not really us," George said. "We're several generations down the line. If anyone were to ship us back to Africa, we'd be like fish out of water."

"It just doesn't sit well with a younger generation of black people," continued George, who is 38. "Africa was a long time ago. Are we always going to be tethered to Africa? Spiritually I'm American. When the war starts, I'm fighting for America."

Joan Morgan, a writer born in Jamaica who moved to New York City as a girl, remembers the first time she publicly corrected someone about the term: at a book signing, when she was introduced as African-American and her family members in the front rows were appalled and hurt.

"That act of calling me African-American completely erased their history and the sacrifice and contributions it took to make me an author," said Morgan, a longtime U.S. citizen who calls herself Black-Caribbean American. (Some insist Black should be capitalized.)

She said people struggle with the fact that black people have multiple ethnicities because it challenges America's original black-white classifications. In her view, forcing everyone into a name meant for descendants of American slaves distorts the nature of the contributions of immigrants like her black countrymen Marcus Garvey and Claude McKay.

Morgan acknowledges that her homeland of Jamaica is populated by the descendants of African slaves. "But I am not African, and Africans are not African-American," she said.

In Latin, a forerunner of the English language, the color black is "niger." In 1619, the first African captives in America were described as "negars," which became the epithet still used by some today.

The Spanish word "negro" means black. That was the label applied by white Americans for centuries.

The word black also was given many pejorative connotations — a black mood, a blackened reputation, a black heart. "Colored" seemed better, until the civil rights movement insisted on Negro, with a capital N.

Then, in the 1960s, "black" came back — as an expression of pride, a strategy to defy oppression.

"Every time black had been mentioned since slavery, it was bad," says Mary Frances Berry, a University of Pennsylvania history professor and former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Reclaiming the word "was a grass-roots move, and it was oppositional. It was like, 'In your face.'"

Afro-American was briefly in vogue in the 1970s, and lingers today in the names of some newspapers and university departments. But it was soon overshadowed by African-American, which first sprouted among the black intelligentsia.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson is widely credited with taking African-American mainstream in 1988, before his second presidential run.

Berry remembers being at a 1988 gathering of civil rights groups organized by Jackson in Chicago when Ramona Edelin, then president of the National Urban Coalition, urged those assembled to declare that black people should be called African-American.

Edelin says today that there was no intent to exclude people born in other countries, or to eliminate the use of black: "It was an attempt to start a cultural offensive, because we were clearly at that time always on the defensive."

"We said, this is kind of a compromise term," she continued. "There are those among us who don't want to be referred to as African. And there also those among us who don't want to be referred to as American. This was a way of bridging divisions among us or in our ideologies so we can move forward as a group."

Jackson, who at the time may have been the most-quoted black man in America, followed through with the plan.

"Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical, cultural base,"

**Lilith** · 02-11-2012, 01:43 PM

Re: Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American'

Interesting article. I think this demonstrates the difficulty of trying to unite a group of people with a very diverse experience under one name. I am not partial to African-American, but then it's nothing to do with me . In my part of the world, the words 'Afro-Caribbean(s)' and 'Caribbean(s)' are used, and I hate them. They just grate.

**franksterr** · 02-12-2012, 06:37 AM

Re: Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American'

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Xavier</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Do you agree with this? I have been fighting this battle myself. I prefer to be called Black.</div></div>

Nothing wrong with that.......I prefer African.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-weight: bold">Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American' </span>
We respect our African heritage, but that term is not really us,' says one
By JESSE WASHINGTON
Source:MSNBC

The labels used to describe Americans of African descent mark the movement of a people from the slave house to the White House. Today, many are resisting this progression by holding on to a name from the past: "black."</div></div>

That name goes even further back as the ancient Egyptian used to call themselves Khamites/Khemites which means Black

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">For this group — some descended from U.S. slaves, some immigrants with a separate history — "African-American" is not the sign of progress hailed when the term was popularized in the late 1980s. Instead, it's a misleading connection to a distant culture.</div></div>

Why is the African culture distant?
It is so because those responsible for our enslavement wish to irreparable damage our connection to the Land of our ancestor.
Why would they want to disconnect us for our home, our past, our people, our culture?
Once disconnected as a people no form of truly functional unity of action will be easily achieved.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The debate has waxed and waned since African-American went mainstream, and gained new significance after the son of a black Kenyan and a white American moved into the White House. President Barack Obama's identity has been contested from all sides, renewing questions that have followed millions of darker Americans:

What are you? Where are you from? And how do you fit into this country?</div></div>

These question would immediately be answered once we recognized that we are Africans.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">"I prefer to be called black," said Shawn Smith, an accountant from Houston. "How I really feel is, I'm American."

"I don't like African-American. It denotes something else to me than who I am," said Smith, whose parents are from Mississippi and North Carolina. "I can't recall any of them telling me anything about Africa. They told me a whole lot about where they grew up in Macomb County and Shelby, N.C."</div></div>

Of Course this is so as your parents(ancestors) were forced to forget and educated to hate Africa.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Gibré George, an entrepreneur from Miami, started a Facebook page called "Don't Call Me African-American" on a whim. It now has about 300 "likes."
Advertise | AdChoices

"We respect our African heritage, but that term is not really us," George said. "We're several generations down the line. If anyone were to ship us back to Africa, we'd be like fish out of water."</div></div>

This is the disconnection imposed on us.....being called black does not change the fact that you are African.
What it reveals is that for one reason or another you wish not to be so noted.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">"It just doesn't sit well with a younger generation of black people," continued George, who is 38. "Africa was a long time ago. Are we always going to be tethered to Africa? Spiritually I'm American. When the war starts, I'm fighting for America."</div></div>

Africa is still here, so its not long ago. Yes you will always be tethered to Africa so long as your features remain African.
War between Africa and America......America is a nation state, while Africa is a continent made up of many nation states. African is an ethnicity and American (Excluding S.Americans and Canadians etc) is a nationality or citizen of USA so any such war will be Genocidal - Racial

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Joan Morgan, a writer born in Jamaica who moved to New York City as a girl, remembers the first time she publicly corrected someone about the term: at a book signing, when she was introduced as African-American and her family members in the front rows were appalled and hurt.</div></div>

If she is a citizen of the US then the designation is not wrong.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">"That act of calling me African-American completely erased their history and the sacrifice and contributions it took to make me an author," said Morgan, a longtime U.S. citizen who calls herself Black-Caribbean American. (Some insist Black should be capitalized.)</div></div>

Oh Really Now!!! but it is perfectly alright to disconnect from your African Ancestors? Erase their history and sacrifice!
Is Joan Morgan parents ethnic/racial Africans or Europeans?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">She said people struggle with the fact that black people have multiple ethnicities because it challenges America's original black-white classifications. In her view, forcing everyone into a name meant for descendants of American slaves distorts the nature of the contributions of immigrants like her black countrymen Marcus Garvey and Claude McKay.</div></div>

They were all Africans and descendants of the enslaved, whether they were kept in bondage in the caribbean or the Americas does not changed who they are ethnically.
As a matter of History nearly all slaves coming from Africa to the west came through (broken in) Jamaica and Brazil before being sold elsewhere.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Morgan acknowledges that her homeland of Jamaica is populated by the descendants of African slaves. "But I am not African, and Africans are not African-American," she said.</div></div>

Are you the descendant of an African but you are not an African???
Is she White (European) or Chinese or Indian or Other Jamaican?
Some Africans are African Americans.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">In Latin, a forerunner of the English language, the color black is "niger." In 1619, the first African captives in America were described as "negars," which became the epithet still used by some today.

The Spanish word "negro" means black. That was the label applied by white Americans for centuries.

The word black also was given many pejorative connotations — a black mood, a blackened reputation, a black heart. "Colored" seemed better, until the civil rights movement insisted on Negro, with a capital N.

Then, in the 1960s, "black" came back — as an expression of pride, a strategy to defy oppression.

"Every time black had been mentioned since slavery, it was bad," says Mary Frances Berry, a University of Pennsylvania history professor and former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Reclaiming the word "was a grass-roots move, and it was oppositional. It was like, 'In your face.'"</div></div>

IT is now a political expression of resistance

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Afro-American was briefly in vogue in the 1970s, and lingers today in the names of some newspapers and university departments. But it was soon overshadowed by African-American, which first sprouted among the black intelligentsia.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson is widely credited with taking African-American mainstream in 1988, before his second presidential run.

Berry remembers being at a 1988 gathering of civil rights groups organized by Jackson in Chicago when Ramona Edelin, then president of the National Urban Coalition, urged those assembled to declare that black people should be called African-American.

Edelin says today that there was no intent to exclude people born in other countries, or to eliminate the use of black: "It was an attempt to start a cultural offensive, because we were clearly at that time always on the defensive."

"We said, this is kind of a compromise term," she continued. "There are those among us who don't want to be referred to as African. And there also those among us who don't want to be referred to as American. This was a way of bridging divisions among us or in our ideologies so we can move forward as a group."

Jackson, who at the time may have been the most-quoted black man in America, followed through with the plan.

"Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical, cultural base," </div></div>

I prefer African.

Why do you prefer Black?

**Dr.Dudd** · 02-12-2012, 10:55 AM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">"Joan Morgan, a writer born in Jamaica who moved to New York City as a girl, remembers the first time she publicly corrected someone about the term: at a book signing, when she was introduced as African-American and her family members in the front rows were appalled and hurt.

"That act of calling me African-American completely erased their history and the sacrifice and contributions it took to make me an author," said Morgan, a longtime U.S. citizen who calls herself Black-Caribbean American.

She said people struggle with the fact that black people have multiple ethnicities because it challenges America's original black-white classifications. In her view, forcing everyone into a name meant for descendants of American slaves distorts the nature of the contributions of immigrants like her black countrymen Marcus Garvey and Claude McKay.

Morgan acknowledges that her homeland of Jamaica is populated by the descendants of African slaves. <span style="font-weight: bold">"But I am not African</span>, and Africans are not African-American," she said."</div></div>

<span style="color: #CC0000">Source</span>

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Peter Tosh</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
"Nuh matta weh yuh come from
As long as you're a black man
You're an African
Noh mind yuh nationality
You've got the identity, of an African.</div></div>

</div></div>Euroopeans don t call themselves European Aericans. The say white then the country like Italian, Greek etc, /Americans. Why can't we accept that africa is not a country, and if we claim to be of African decent it could be done through the country or region of our immidiate origin like Jamaican or Caribbean/American it is not more relevant and in line with the way Europeans label their ancestry?

**Skelly** · 02-12-2012, 01:48 PM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

I guess I prefer black as well. I do not deny my African heritage, but at the same time I have no emotional ties to the continent, as I don't even know where my people originated. In fact, I know more about my other ancestry ...

**jah_yout** · 02-12-2012, 05:39 PM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Skelly</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I guess I prefer black as well. I do not deny my African heritage, but at the same time I have no emotional ties to the continent, as I don't even know where my people originated. In fact, I know more about my other ancestry ... </div></div>

what do you call people from china, japan, singapore, korea, etc. when attempting to identify them racially speaking?
assuming you can not distinguish the ones i mentioned nationally from each other...

terms i have heard include:

asian
chiney
chinese
oriental
yellow

**Emperah** · 02-12-2012, 05:42 PM

Re: "I'm not African-American"

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Skelly</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> I have no emotional ties to the continent, as I don't even know where my people originated. In fact, I know more about my other ancestry ... </div></div>

that is all by design, dem nuh want yuh fi know bout it an dem raddah yuh feel hatred towards it. Emotional ties ha nuttin fi duh wid it. Your blood is tied to it.

"I'm not African-American"

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