Barama Actually Won
All of my life it has been a crazy impossibility to think that a black man would ever become President of the United States of America. I never thought I would see it.
Despite his numbers, I didn’t think Obama would win. I figured this country was still far too racist. I’m ecstatic I was wrong.
My son will never know that old world but in history books and the ramblings of his elders.
God* bless America.
* - in the poetic sense, of course, not the fictional interventionist sense.
P.S. Now that we have a black president, can we finally get rid of our lexicon this tortured term "African-American"? It’s imprecise, inaccurate, and unnecessary. If you’re offended by the term "black", you probably shouldn’t be having conversations with adults.
Whitney Marshall said,
November 5, 2008 @ 11:17 am
In the case of Obama, the term African-American is neither imprecise nor inaccurate. In fact it’s one of the most precise applications of the term that I can think of…
John Stewart said,
November 5, 2008 @ 11:39 am
Why is he African-American? Because his father was born in Kenya? Barack himself was born in Hawaii. That makes him an American-American, or just plain American.
His mother is from English descent. That makes him as much an English-American as African-American.
Yet why do you use this term to refer to him? BECAUSE OF SKIN COLOR.
So let’s use the right term. We’re talking about skin color; let’s call him black. I’m white. I may also be a Scottish-American, but it doesn’t say anything about the point at hand, which is a discussion of my skin color… THIS is why it is imprecise.
What about white people from South Africa? I saw an episode of Top Chef where a white woman, who had a parent from South Africa, describe herself (half-jokingly) that she was a very pale African-American. People GASPED as if this was some huge racist comment. It’s not and shouldn’t be perceived as such. We should stop giving reverence to a term which isn’t useful and was invented to dance around people’s perceived sentitivities.
Furthermore, on more general terms, “African-American” is in most cases an INACCURATE term (admittedly, it’s only half-inaccurate in Obama’s case).
In fact, I recall reading recently (can’t find it right now, so obviously this is not gospel) that genetic testing shows that a high percentage of those who self-identify as African-American actually have no African ancestry!
Should we call black people with no African blood African-American? How about we just use the more precise and more accurate term for what we REALLY mean… black! It’s not an epithet!
Not all Africans are black and not all black people are from African descent! Also, not all black people in America are actually American citizens.
Drilling further, if we want to get into the roots of human ancestry, we’re ALL descended from homo sapiens originating in the horn of Africa. Therefore, we’re all African-American in this country.
Does that make it a useless enough term?
Whitney Marshall said,
November 5, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
Whoa, apparently I touched a nerve. I was just trying to be snarky.
But I stand by my point, that he is correctly called an African-American, in the sense that he’s a hybrid between an African and an American. I do agree that the term is all but meaningless in everyday use, and is just a polysyllabic way of saying black. Like my high school English teacher said, never use a 50 cent word when a nickel word will do.
Also, I’m not sure the term was “invented to dance around people’s perceived sensitivities.” I think it was adopted by black people as a way of describing themselves, in the 60s and 70s, presumably because the term black was becoming an epithet.
John Stewart said,
November 5, 2008 @ 12:49 pm
You’re right, Malcolm X first popularly used the term in the early 1960s, and it became more popular through the 1970s over the term Afro-American. Jesse Jackson further pushed for its adoption in the 1980s:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/African-American%23African-American-population
This about surveys of the black population on the term:
http://volokh.com/posts/1204569019.shtml
However, this from a black man on the subject:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_latimes-why_im_black.htm
It’s time to move on.
Britts3rdaccount said,
November 24, 2008 @ 2:48 pm
either that or u better start calling me Irish-american…and my ancestors were slaves too so I want my reperations from the British
Gwen said,
December 17, 2008 @ 9:26 am
I have always insisted on calling white people of undetermined/mixed ancestry (including and especially myself) Euro-Americans. No matter how hard my relatives look for a darker, more ancient American ancestry and despite the fact that my people arrived in the early 1600’s, we still have an identity based from Colonial European culture, and anyway — why are mine the only people who are deprived of a hyphen?! The only (blank)-Americans are the tribes, and even they migrated from somewhere, but at least they did it first.
That said, “black” is more inaccurate than any geo-political designator. Most people are some shade of brown. But the WORST is calling people “non-whites”! If you’re going to be on a mission about language, blast any media source that uses that repulsive term. Hopefully soon, any mention of skin color will comply with the Crayola Appearance Descriptor System.