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Shall We Call Ourselves "African American"? |
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Those who strongly object to the use of "Black Americans" believe it is disrespectful and disempowering to label the cultural identity of any person by use of a single homogenous color, particularly if this label is historically connected with negative, social and cultural connotations.
Historically, they say, the miscellaneous use of the label ‘Black’ reflects its contemporary use as a means to denote a specific socio-cultural and political context. It is recognized as a colloquial term that was fashioned as a reactionary concept to derogatory racial epithets in the 1960’s. However, they continue, just as "colored" and "negro" were acceptable terms of reference in their time, 'black' must also be recognized for the socially loaded term that it is. To them, upholding the color coding system of ethnicity maintains an offensive hierarchical system of a perceived cultural supremacy and dominance. Understandably, those against using the term "Black Americans" link the word ‘black’ to the words negro, negre, nigra and the highly offensive "N"-word and therefore what they prefer is "African." As one academician said: "African American is preferred and only the most conservative people use the term 'Black American'. This is because of their belief that the word 'African' specifically relates to the indigenous people of the African Continent and their descendants in the Diaspora--in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, the Antilles, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Uruguay. However, opponents question whether "African American" includes those people of African descent.
Counter-arguments from fellow debaters also question the issue of color and point out that Ancient Africans knew that strictly speaking “black” is absolutely destitute of color while that which is “dark” is absolutely destitute of light. “Dark” -- a loose generic term used figuratively (metaphorical, symbolic) and literally (most obvious meaning)—may mean anything from complete absence of light to varying degrees of mixed or partial or shaded light or dimness. Something is considered “dark” if it cannot be seen through. Furthermore, they continue, there is no really "black" person in the exact sense of the word--and this is a reason for using the term "Negro." The color of Africans range from brown to sort of yellow, depending upon their location in Africa. It is highly likely that Primitive Africans had a wide range of colors and hair textures since they evolved during the Ice Age and lived in a wide variety of climatic environments--some high in the mountains and some on the flat-lands. Next, these debaters say that all peoples of the world are originally from Africa and to call everybody from Africa as Africans would be to include Europeans. For example, many Europeans in South Africa believe they too are "indigenous" Africans--a word to which they fit the 17th century etymological meaning: "born or produced in a particular place--a native."
For those who advocate the term "African American" to reflect Africa as the true home of dark-skinned Americans, their opponents point out that the name “Africa” is not of African origin but rather of European origin. What is now known as “Africa” was originally termed by its original indigenous people as “Alkebu-Lan." Thus, to the ancient Greeks the Aegean Sea (between Greece and Turkey) divided the world into Europe and Asia. Egypt was considered part of Asia until 150 AD when the geographer Ptolemy recognized a third continent which he called Lybia (now Africa). The Carthaginians called Carthage (located in the mid North coast of Lybia) by a word which the Romans wrote as “Africa.” Gradually, the term “Africa” spread to encompass the entire third continent. Lybia remains, however, the section Northwest of Egypt and Northeast of Tunisia (the modern name of the original Africa). These debaters close with the sound argument that just because of how Europeans demean labels applied to minorities it does not make those demeaning statements true. Furthermore, they continue, to walk away from a word well-established in Ancient Africa (i.e. that Africans were a "black" skinned people) or is well-suited to Black people is to give historically foolish European declarations the power they do not deserve. Since renaming is what Europeans do (because this gives them a foot in the door for claiming dominance over it or actually claiming it), to keep running from their connotations means there will be no end of their victims being on the retreat. Today, "Neo-African" is one of the many terms used to define any person who has dominant African genes and strictly adheres to an Africentric lifestyle and culture. |
