Don't Call me African-American

[rojnish]

As an old white dude who sometimes acts like a bitchy woman (like now, so hold your bonnet), I'm perplexed by your post. The old white dudes and bitchy women of which you speak were trying hard to be respectful, it seems. What the hell do they know from black? There was a time, probably when the old white dudes and bitchy women were in college, that black was considered derogatory. They were told it is respectful to say African American, so they make the effort to trip over the linguistic hurdles and say African American each and every time, out of what they perceive to be respect, and you damn them. What the hell......

[DCnPhilly]

As an old white dude who sometimes acts like a bitchy woman (like now, so hold your bonnet), I'm perplexed by your post. The old white dudes and bitchy women of which you speak were trying hard to be respectful, it seems. What the hell do they know from black? There was a time, probably when the old white dudes and bitchy women were in college, that black was considered derogatory. They were told it is respectful to say African American, so they make the effort to trip over the linguistic hurdles and say African American each and every time, out of what they perceive to be respect, and you damn them. What the hell......

I kinda see what he's saying. I interned at a lobby group at the height of Clintonian Era PCness. I think a lot of office environments - with good intentions - have created awkward situations that force employees to be more conscious of factors that should be irrelevant. Old, white, bitchy, or whatever, I think they mean well, but offices are strange communities that are awkward enough on their own merit.

[loveisnoise]

I can't think of a single manner in which the word bitchy is appropriate in repeatedly describing a woman, unless it is my **** of an ex wife.

I kinda see what he's saying. I interned at a lobby group at the height of Clintonian Era PCness. I think a lot of office environments - with good intentions - have created awkward situations that force employees to be more conscious of factors that should be irrelevant. Old, white, bitchy, or whatever, I think they mean well, but offices are strange communities that are awkward enough on their own merit.

[DCnPhilly]

I can't think of a single manner in which the word bitchy is appropriate in repeatedly describing a woman, unless it is my **** of an ex wife.

Actually his whole rant was the definition of bitchy, but I think it was tongue in cheek.

[3rd&Brown]

but I think it was tongue in cheek.

This.

Thank you. I'm sorta surprised this conversation is still ongoing. Though I will just add the caveat that at times, it seems as though those who are most careful with respect to their labels are actually the least sensitive people in the room/conversation/etc.

[3rd&Brown]

This reeks of misogynist. Every time you say woman, it must be prefaced with 'bitchy' or 'bitchy white'. Stay classy true believer.

Oh yeah. You're the definition of class.

Can't wait until we have a grand celebration for your 10,000th post.

Get a *ucking life, loser.

[Dayman]

I am not Caucasian. I am not Georgian, Chechen, Azerbaijani, or Armenian.

[JakeL]

Wouldn't LGBTQIA make the B incorrect? Bisexual means that there are two genders, something that the LGBTQIA alphabet soup is trying to say is incorrect. Shouldn't it be Pansexual?

[DCnPhilly]

Wouldn't LGBTQIA make the B incorrect? Bisexual means that there are two genders, something that the LGBTQIA alphabet soup is trying to say is incorrect. Shouldn't it be Pansexual?

"Paul's a gender dysmorphic, bi-genitalian, pansexual." - Jenna Maroney

[Sharkfood]

As a white person with roots in america going back to about 1720, I am offended by the term European-American. I have nothing to do with Europe.

I can understand why some blacks reject African-American.

[MarketStEl]

Boy, I'm so glad I'm a common white person - I don't have all those issues.

Nope - you have a completely different bunch of 'em.

[MarketStEl]

A couple years ago I was talking to a group and I used LGBT. I was interrupted by someone that I forgot Q. I had no idea what she was talking about. Nitpicking on the alphabet soup just tends to exhaust people I think, especially when you have to interrupt someone speaking to force the point home.

Which is why I am comfortable with "queer," to the slight dismay of some friends of mine who remember it as a pejorative exclusively.

As for the main topic: I miss William Safire!

The more I go through all this, the more I believe it's the 'white' (read: Teutonic and their relatives mainly) people who have the real problem, and the problem is this: They went through history, stomping all over the other peoples of the world because they were 'superior,' then when the messy reality of human complexity set in, had to figure out ways to make that belief reality. The 'nonwhite' immigrants from southern and eastern Europe figured out what was what soon after their arrival in the United States and, thanks to the way the white folks had constructed that edifice of superiority, figured out that the way out of the conundrum was to become white themselves - something they could do and the descendants of slaves never could.

The handwringing over terminology is both symptom of and attempted cure for a problem it's really incapable of solving: We, the most despised of all the various American ethnicities, have for several centuries spent much time and effort asserting our claim to equal brotherhood in the American family. Every time we appear on the threshold of obtaining that, something comes along that moves the goalposts again. The promotion of African-American"* as a term of reference is both a symbol of the progress made and the problem that doesn't go away: the progress is embodied in the fact that the term signals our transformation in many ways into just another American ethnic group, while the wailing - and the sniping back as evidenced here - both reflect the fact that we still aren't, neither in our own eyes or in the eyes of our detractors.

*If it hadn't been for that stomping, who knows? We might today speak of Yoruban-Americans, Ibo-Americans, Xhosan-Americans and so on. As one wag once said, those European "nation-states" were merely tribes with organized governments and armies.

[DCnPhilly]

Which is why I am comfortable with "queer," to the slight dismay of some friends of mine who remember it as a pejorative exclusively.

As for the main topic: I miss William Safire!

The more I go through all this, the more I believe it's the 'white' (read: Teutonic and their relatives mainly) people who have the real problem, and the problem is this: They went through history, stomping all over the other peoples of the world because they were 'superior,' then when the messy reality of human complexity set in, had to figure out ways to make that belief reality. The 'nonwhite' immigrants from southern and eastern Europe figured out what was what soon after their arrival in the United States and, thanks to the way the white folks had constructed that edifice of superiority, figured out that the way out of the conundrum was to become white themselves - something they could do and the descendants of slaves never could.

The handwringing over terminology is both symptom of and attempted cure for a problem it's really incapable of solving: We, the most despised of all the various American ethnicities, have for several centuries spent much time and effort asserting our claim to equal brotherhood in the American family. Every time we appear on the threshold of obtaining that, something comes along that moves the goalposts again. The promotion of African-American"* as a term of reference is both a symbol of the progress made and the problem that doesn't go away: the progress is embodied in the fact that the term signals our transformation in many ways into just another American ethnic group, while the wailing - and the sniping back as evidenced here - both reflect the fact that we still aren't, neither in our own eyes or in the eyes of our detractors.

*If it hadn't been for that stomping, who knows? We might today speak of Yoruban-Americans, Ibo-Americans, Xhosan-Americans and so on. As one wag once said, those European "nation-states" were merely tribes with organized governments and armies.

It sounds like terminology for race is caught on the Euphemism Treadmill, and the fact that we still feel the need to adjust these labels every couple of decades is proof that those in the majority view other races as negative characteristics. That's not to say we're all maliciously racist, but pity and guilt can be every bit as racist as malice.

On an historical side note, when did slavery in America become based on race? Weren't there aristocratic slave owning blacks in the South prior to the Louisiana Purchase? I could be wrong. My point of reference is a Lifetime movie.

[MarketStEl]

It sounds like terminology for race is caught on the Euphemism Treadmill, and the fact that we still feel the need to adjust these labels every couple of decades is proof that those in the majority view other races as negative characteristics. That's not to say we're all maliciously racist, but pity and guilt can be every bit as racist as malice.

On an historical side note, when did slavery in America become based on race? Weren't there aristocratic slave owning blacks in the South prior to the Louisiana Purchase? I could be wrong. My point of reference is a Lifetime movie.

Slavery in the United States became race-based pretty soon after the first shipment of Africans landed at Jamestown about a year or two after it was settled in 1607. Yes, there were white indentured servants too, but the ranks of those declined rather quickly after plantation owners realized that the slaves were theirs to do with as they wished for as long as they owned them.

The number of black slave owners in Louisiana - which, you will recall, was a French possession prior to the Louisiana Purchase - was probably rather small still, just as the number of free blacks in Virginia were in colonial days. And if you recall what happened in Haiti the same year as the Louisiana Purchase (IIRC), it's not like the French were much more enlightened masters.

The problem was, it was like a drug: once the slaveowners experienced its effects, they insisted on having more of it - at least in those parts of the country where it remained profitable to do so. Slavery died in the North around the time of the Revolution for economic reasons as much as moral ones, if not more. But (as Jefferson realized but could not bring himself to act upon) keeping this system alive required a great degree of moral hypocrisy and ever more elaborate laws designed to keep blacks separate and distinct from, and beneath, whites. (One example of this was laws that made slave status matrilineal, in complete opposition to all other English laws governing descent and inheritance, which were patrilineal. To have allowed that would have made the children of male slaveowner-female slave dalliances like that of Jefferson and Sally Hemings free, which would have confused things mightily.)

Now to your first point: No, not "other races" - *blacks specifically.* As I've said before, race-based slavery is our original sin, and the mental contortions white (English and Scots-Irish mainly) Americans put themselves through to make it morally justifiable have warped how whites and blacks regard one another ever since.

[DCnPhilly]

Slavery in the United States became race-based pretty soon after the first shipment of Africans landed at Jamestown about a year or two after it was settled in 1607. Yes, there were white indentured servants too, but the ranks of those declined rather quickly after plantation owners realized that the slaves were theirs to do with as they wished for as long as they owned them.

The number of black slave owners in Louisiana - which, you will recall, was a French possession prior to the Louisiana Purchase - was probably rather small still, just as the number of free blacks in Virginia were in colonial days. And if you recall what happened in Haiti the same year as the Louisiana Purchase (IIRC), it's not like the French were much more enlightened masters.

The problem was, it was like a drug: once the slaveowners experienced its effects, they insisted on having more of it - at least in those parts of the country where it remained profitable to do so. Slavery died in the North around the time of the Revolution for economic reasons as much as moral ones, if not more. But (as Jefferson realized but could not bring himself to act upon) keeping this system alive required a great degree of moral hypocrisy and ever more elaborate laws designed to keep blacks separate and distinct from, and beneath, whites. (One example of this was laws that made slave status matrilineal, in complete opposition to all other English laws governing descent and inheritance, which were patrilineal. To have allowed that would have made the children of male slaveowner-female slave dalliances like that of Jefferson and Sally Hemings free, which would have confused things mightily.)

Now to your first point: No, not "other races" - *blacks specifically.* As I've said before, race-based slavery is our original sin, and the mental contortions white (English and Scots-Irish mainly) Americans put themselves through to make it morally justifiable have warped how whites and blacks regard one another ever since.

Always an enlightening pleasure :-)

I'll have to read up more on it. Like I said, my point of reference was a Lifetime movie, maybe Hallmark.

And you're absolutely right. It isn't simply race, but those of African descent that we institutionally marginalize. After all blacks have been in America far longer than other races yet still suffer because of a system that existed in an entirely different time.

[gideon]

no matter what you say, you'll offend someone.

[Radical Ed]

Charlize Theron is an African American. She was born and raised in South Africa and became an American citizen several years ago.

Charlize Theron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[wasantha]

yeah i often see that black people are more offended when they are getting noticed. as african americans or as black

[U.man]

I don't believe that Caucasian folks who fall somewhere in the range between "eggshell" and "so white you're pink" have a personal appreciation of what bigotry feels like. Some have an intellectual understanding of bigotry but none have ever actually experienced it. Bigotry has never been directed at them, ever. So the opinions voiced on the topic by such folks, no matter how well intentioned, is something akin to offering opinions on parenting by people who have no children.

[Gladys]

Except when sharing what they have been told. That's not their opinion but what they have been told by someone, who you would consider qualified.