Black and White and Said All Over?
If I told you that this guy was born in the United States to parents who were both born in the United States, whose parents before them were born in the United States and so on back for several generations, how would you describe his race?
We’re all conditioned through political correctness to call him “African-American.” Not that he has ever been to Africa, nor has any of his ancestors for unnumbered generations. Granting even that one of his forefathers was taken from Africa to America with not one of the intervening generations stopping anywhere else, it’s quite possible at this point that he has more American-born blood in him than African.
But we can’t call him black, even though that is an immediately identifiable attribute of his unmistakable to anyone who sees him and does not know him. We can’t call him “the tall guy,” at least not looking from at this picture. And “bearded” only last as long as he refrains from shaving.
So why can’t we call him black, or at the very least “brown” given the actual shade of his skin? Because decades ago, Jesse Jackson coined the phrase “African-American” and not one white guy had the guts to challenge him on it.
And then the political correctness snowballed from there.
So now, we have to refer to this woman as “Asian-American” if she was born in American but has some sort of ancestral tie to Asia.
And this man is Muslim-American, because his religion has now become part of his appellation.
But in France they don’t run around calling either of these guys French-African.
And Britain doesn’t have any Anglo-Asians, at least, certainly none that surf.
Hey, what about this lady? She’s white, excuse me, caucasian, right? Even though she has no antecedents in the Turkish Caucasus mountain region. What if I told you she was born in Detroit, but her parents originally came from Johannesburg. That’s in South Africa, where there are plenty of non-black skinned people. Shouldn’t we call her “African-American?”*
My point is, is good old Jesse’s term meant to take the focus off of skin color or put it on heritage? And if heritage-identity is the goal, wouldn’t that make all of us Mesopotamian-Americans?
*By way of full-disclosure, this woman is not from South Africa. I didn’t have handy any pictures of white ladies from South Africa, so I used my sister to illustrate the point.
* * * * *
Get BentSense delivered to your in-box:
* * * * *
TheWriteJerry @ August 27, 2007
I guess I’m supposed to be an African American. But the few real Africans I met were nothing like me or my black (African American?) friends. They liked different food, had different religions and certainly had little in common with me. I think Jesse Jackson had the right idea when he tried to give me a definable heritage. Perhaps the problem was he only got it half right. I think my heritage is not African-American but just American.
The label thing is just silly — as we are clearly seeing. Why can’t we just say the “Black guy”, “The White guy”, the guy with the brown skin, the guy with the pink (hard to tan) skin . . . the fine bratha’ with the tank top over 6 pack abs . . . yeah, I’d rather describe people like that.
I actually had a friend that was white and from South Africa. I have another friend that is white as can be and has no discernible accent who was born and raised in Mexico (my mind was totally blown when I found that out as my South African friend did have an accent so help clue me into to her ancestry).
Dang! Does all of this make me an “Irish Canadian Tattooed Redneck with Saskatchewan and Albertan Decent”? Can I just call the surfer girl “Hot”? Does that offend anyone? Maybe I’ll just call her ‘on her cell phone’ instead.
My wife’s family is Italian — three generations ago, they came from Sicily. Mine is mostly Irish, with a little German. Four generations ago…. Sometimes, my daughter refers to me as Irish-American, and herself as Italian-American. I tell her she’s wrong: we’re American — of Irish ancestry, if we want, or Italian, or whatever — but we’re American, because thats where we live.
The television character Clark Kent said once, ‘Kal-el is who I was….Superman is what I can do…Clark Kent is who I am.’ The other stuff is what made me what I am. American is who I am.
Great comments, everyone!
Bill - I saw that episode of Smallville. It’s a great quote and really sums up my point here.
CS - You have that hot chick’s number?
Awesome Mom - I think it’s so easy to forget that there are white-skinned people who are natives of Africa, I think mostly because we’ve been conditioned to refer to dark skinned Americans as “African-Americans,” thus excluding people like your friend. And that’s just plain wrong.
Telemill - I wish I had 6-pack abs. Which is probably why I avoid tank tops
Trainer - That’s exactly part of the problem with the silly nomenclature we’ve developed out of political correctness. After all, does Jesse Jackson speak for every black person in America? I don’t recall there being an election.
I think John Winger said it best, “We’re all very different people. We’re not Watusi, we’re not Spartans, we’re Americans. With a capital “A”, huh? And you know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts.”
Scott has hit it on the head.
I think what this country has lost and desperately needs to regain is that melting-pot feeling, the attitude that whatever our personal heritage, it is our shared goals that should identify us, our desire for the ideals and realities of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence making us all one people, all of us Americans.
Not me man, I’m just a little toe. Winger is my big toe.
I grew up in the South in the US, and now I live in Scotland, where black people are called black, because ‘african scottish’ sounds stupid, not to mention the fact that most of the black people in the UK didn’t come from Africa.
But that’s beside the point…
I generally find that it’s rude to refer to people by their race anyway, and avoid it if I can, because I assume black people don’t want to be categorized for their appearance any more than I do.
My favorite African-American is Charlize Theron.
Great essay! I wrote about this sort of thing on my stumbleupon page. You did a much more complete job than I. My annoyance with the term African American is that not all people that would classify themselves as black even come from Africa. Haiti, Jamaica,Dominican Republic, even the UK have people that would be considered black, when they come here, they are called African American. Sometimes they aren’t even American.
I am white, of European descent, but my ancestors came to the US prior to the Revolutionary War. None of them are from Eurasia/Central Asia, so I don’t think that I am Caucasian.
Politically correct should be a substitute for being correct. Besides why does it matter?
Thanks for the compliment, Melissa. I clicked over to your essay on the subject. I like the the personal approach you took — really puts a “face” on the issue.
Here in America, we’ve become mired in political correctness to the point that a vast majority of people do and say things out of mere habit, or worse, out of fear. If we are to stop our slide into mediocrity, we must as a people and as individuals regain the courage to stand up in the face of cultural bullies such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (don;t even get me started on the Imus situation).
hey ppl saying thing on cyberspace is fine but in real world people do get offended.
But consider this case…..
A Brit standing next to an african american and someone describes the brit as
“The white guy standin with that black”
here both were referred to by their color but still the African American would be the one most offended wouldn’t he…..but why not the ‘white’ guy i ask u?
IS this because the African American is actually embarrassed of his skin color being black????????? does he want to BE white colored??
all i want to say is that the way they react to being called a black is …..
they themselves should decide about this.
No, black people aren’t embarrassed by their skin color — remember James Brown “Say it loud: I’m Black and I’m proud!” Not a problem there.
What you just said, goes deeper than what you pointed to. When you say “The white GUY standing with that black.” It is the underlying tone and MEANING to your statement that people would protest. Turn your statement around, you would never say . . .
“That Black GUY standing with that White.” Doesn’t even sound right to you does it? Most White people would just stare at you waiting for you to complete the sentence . . . white — what? White wall? White car? ooooohhh you mean White GUY! Oh.
White people tend not to objectify other white people. They would complete the sentence with white guy or white girl or white man. But in your statement you have clearly shown us why Black PEOPLE (men and women) feel dis-respected many times because we do not get the “benefit” or the “respect” that is automatic to the White guys on our world.
He’s NOT just a BLACK. He’s a black guy. Black is a description of a “guy” of a “person” of a “man.” Take away the GUY and you have a “thing.” And that, my friend is what we object to. Give us the equal respect. DESCRIBE us . . . don’t designate us as a THING.
Get the point now?
Telemill hit the question most key. I don’t think it can be improved upon and essentially touches upon what most of the dominant culture of Europe and America tend to experience; a collective cognitive dissonance when it concerns dealing with ethnicities/”races”/other. I’m not surprised that you and quite a few others don’t “get it”.
Ultimately a people can choose to be described or called by the name/names of their choosing. Boy, Negro, black, blackee, hammite, canaanite, Ni**er, etc where the objectifications put on “Black/African” folks in america and throughout the world. Present differences in culture do not distance Africans from their respective root culture(s) and history. The question/statement posed is reductionist and flawed in it’s logic.
It might be added that African would simply have been a better term than the “Afro” American which Jackson promoted. America’s Africans, Asia’s Africans, and the like would better suit the discussion. Further nation state boundaries as imposed on Africa counter to its culture and history lends to even greater confusion.
Lastly, I find it funny how you miss the point and further just want to reduce “Black/Africans” and the like to just American as if that actually means something outside of the confused and often deluded mind of those that live in the U.S. Mexicans, Peruvians, Brazilians, Canadians, etc are all Americans but I’m sure when it comes to crossing the border to the U.S. that cognitive dissonance creeps up again.
Dahm, you might spend less time using big words in attempt to craft complex thoughts and more time on actually making a point. It serves no purpose to point fingers when you’ve not made it clear who you are pointing to.
apocalypto, well duh! Of course someone is going to get offended if you refer to them as ‘that black’ - for all of the reasons Telemill pointed out. Hell, I’m white and I’d be offended for them.
Telemill, you’re right, white people don’t tend to objectify other white people, but from my experience, the white people I know don’t objectify black people either. I’m not dismissing the idea that it happens, but personally I find apocalypto’s example appalling. I see objectification mostly when people (black, white, etc.) are using someone’s nationality as their identifier; ie. that Mexican, that Brit, that Canadian, etc. Is this any better than ‘that black’? Probably not. But what’s the alternative? What’s acceptable? Frankly, I don’t mind being called white, even though my skin is more like beige. And if I were in Africa I wouldn’t mind if someone chose to refer to me as ‘that American’.
Thanks for this post. I have said these things many times in company, but have never written about it. One of my blogs will steal this subject sooner than later. I have been remiss on not doing it before. I loved your take on it.
I remember a friend of mine, who played on a long-ago Stanford Pac-8 champion basketball team, with a wonderful black fellow who went on to the NBA. At a banquet one night with the whole team in attendance, my friend opened his remarks by saying that this team was so old that he could remember when some of his teammates were Negroes.
;o)
why are people in the US so hung up about race?who cares what race you are. It’s only skin covering. Inside everyone has the same heart,lungs etc so why make such a deal of it. It has always baffled me to pay it any mind at all….
Well piglet I hate to break it to you but there are differences that if you don’t acknowledge can cause you to get some heat in most situations. So while it’s true that in large part we’re all the same physiologically, the different “races” are quite different. We can’t ignore those differences. We need to learn to embrace them. Instead we typically either fear them or allow them to anger us (which usually comes from fear).
I applaud you. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Though I have said it more than once on my own blog. It’s good to see that I’m not the only one out there thinking and saying the same thing.
Trackback
[…] thoughts for years, I had never written about them. Then I came across an article at bentsense.com and decided that I probably should. Please take a look at Jerry’s take on this issue there, […]
1 major problem with self-identifying as “American” is that it implies the I’m native to America, which I’m not. As far as I can tell native Americans are the only ones who can really claim “American”, everyone else is just staking claims to stolen land.
personally, if someone asks my ethnicity i say Celt. White is a color not an ethnicity, and saying “Irish / Scottish / Scots Irish” is too unwieldy. So I’m a Celt. And if I’m outside the US and people ask where I’m from I say California; partly because I’m an 8th generation Californian with no particular attachment to the rest of the US and partly because - to be totally honest - when it comes to the international community red state America is an embarrassment and I don’t want to be associated with ya’ll.
Just an American. Thank You
How about we just call people what they are, humans. Labeling based on skin colour is ridiculous. I could call a man like tiger woods black, because his skin colour is so, yet his family is very diverse. He is more asian, then he is african, yet we call him black or african american. The easy way to settle this is to refer to people as they are, and as I said, that is to call them humans beings, as there is biologically speaking only one race, the Human Race.
I’m norwegian girl living in Norway. And Norway is becoming more and more like america for each day it seems to me. We are also beginning to become a real melting-pot with people from all over the world, pakistan, iran, bosnia, somalia, and europians. Norway isn’t a big country and there’s around five million people living here. It’s very challenging to know how to handel all the different cultures, and knowing what to call people, black, brown, yellow, asian, african or middeleastern. The politicians here in Norway are very careful and “political correct” and trys hard to make the same right for everybody.
But I think that the most difficult thing here, isn’t really what coulur skin people have, but their culture, that often is very different from ours. In Norway we have the freedom of speach, the right to be who we are and the right to belive in what we want. Then we get people to our country that is so radically different from us, and thats when the problems start. I don’t know the soulution, I find it very hard. I am not a racist in any way, and I treat all the people I meet with respect and politeness. But here in Norway, where the majority of course is white, it’s ridiculus who easy you get labled as a racist, just because youre critical to other peoples cultures. I am critical to some of the muslim culture for instans, and I am not going to shut up OR accept being called a racist just because I dont agree with their way of living. I get insulted when people from other countries and cultures comes to live in norway and dont follow this countries laws and rules. I think THAT is very disrespectful.
I dont really know where I’m going with this, but I just want to say that it isn’t the skincoulur that is the real issue, alltough I totally know it’s a different thing in the states than in Norway. I just wish people would respect eath other, and understand that it’s okay not to agree with everything when we’re all so different anyway.
Mesopotamian? Where on earth did you get that? We don’t all have roots back to Mesopotamia. It was an early civilization, but not all humans came from there. If anything, we should all be called African Americans, since that seems to be the cradle of humanity.
“And Britain doesn’t have any Anglo-Asians, at least, certainly none that surf.”
Well thats total b*ll**ks if ever I’ve read it for a start… lots of young Asian people call themselves British-Asian or British-Indian or any other term that they wish to use.
Signed,
A British person with a phD in Cities and Cultural Studies.
Lynx, Celts were also found in France and Spain so that doesn’t help. Also if you’re born in a country and your family has lived here for a number of generations then I think you can safely claim that national identity regardless of the circumstances under which that land was taken. If what you said held true then few Brits could claim that status since the “original” natives were tromped on by Angles, Saxons, Romans, etc. Very little land worth having hasn’t been invaded by someone from somwhere else.
What’s ironic about this article is that African-Americans were the LAST ethnic group in America to describe their ethnicity this way, not the first. Anyone who has celebrated Octoberfest (German-American or Bavarian-American), or St. Patrick’s Day (Irish-American), or Columbus Day (Italian-American) knows that. Jesse Jackson’s argument was that since other ethnic groups already used such designations, it was only proper to use the same format already used to identify other ethnic groups be used to call blacks in the U.S. what they really were: African-Americans.
I understand the feeling that we’ve been in America so long, and that we have such little connection to our heritage, that we don’t have much reason to call ourselves African-American, but that’s what we are. Other Americans, including most non-British European-Americans are proud to remember and identify the heritage they come from, African-Americans should be also. While whatever culture we build for ourselves from what was deliberately ripped from us as a result of slavery and racism will have little or no resemblance to traditional African culture, it will be uniquely ours; in a sense it will also be uniquely American.
While the idea of tne so-called “American melting pot” is an appealing one, it never precluded other immigrants from remembering and celebrating their heritage. Indeed, America grew at its fastest rates when we allowed immigrants into our country relatively freely. Even non-English speaking (still mostly European admittedly) immigrants found a way to thrive in their new homeland, most non-English speaking never mastering it. As long as a coworker spoke both English and their native language, they could find a job and make a good life in the USA. Their kids usually learned American culture and English easily, becoming true Americans. This tolerance by established Americans for ethnic diversity with eventual inevitable assimilation is truly the American Way I wish to believe in.