africultures
Americans of African Descent
(E?)(L?) http://www.africultures.com/anglais/articles_anglais/41cremieux.htm
Americans of African Descent: Names and Identities
by Anne Crémieux
"African", "Colored", "Negro", "Black", "Afro-American", "African American", ...
The terms used to refer to Black Americans change with time, because times change and words have to change along with them. Brought over from Africa to serve as slaves, Blacks eventually found freedom eventually came but not equality. Treated as second-class citizens, Blacks were finally granted equal rights but not equal privileges, and the search for a common term - a name they can use to describe themselves - continues today, raising important questions: Who chooses the names? What meanings do they carry? What is the historical progression that they reflect? What does the difficulty of finding and keeping a name reveal? Certainly it's more than just a linguistic debate; but maybe less than the passionate reactions it spurs. The changes in the names "Black Americans" wish to be called express a complex search for a cultural and racial identity.
During slavery, Blacks arriving from Africa naturally chose to call themselves "Africans", whereas colonists often used the adjectives "slave" or "free", or else the Portuguese word "negro". The term "African" can still be found in the names of religious congregations such as the "First African Baptist Church", the "African Episcopal Church" or the "African Masonic Lodge" ... However Blacks soon lost touch with the traditions of their homeland as a result of a policy that often separated children from their families at birth. Furthermore, their exposure to racist representations that portrayed Africans as heathen, ape-like savages running naked in the jungle soon led Blacks to reject a term whose negative connotations when used by Whites became obvious. Hence African fell into disuse. With the end of the slave trade - which remained intense until 1833 despite its abolition in 1807 - the absence of massive new arrivals rendered the term obsolete. African became an insult. The 1991 film "Boyz 'N The Hood" illustrates the harsh consequences awaiting those who use it when ten-year-old Tre gets into a fight for telling his classmate they are both Africans, and is suspended from school.
While "negro" was used by all, the word "Colored" (often spelled "Coloured") soon became prevalent in the Black community. Miscegenation was common, which resulted in a wider spectrum of skin complexion. White men had full power over their slaves and rapes often occurred; impregnating female slaves was one way of increasing a precious commodity, among other things. Widely used until the beginning of the 20th century, the term "Colored" allowed America, a slave society that would later become an institutionally racist nation-state, to create a category encompassing all non-Whites. "Colored" could include "Blacks", "Native Americans", "Mexicans" in the Southwest, and later "Asians" and "Latinos", though it referred primarily to Blacks as the name of the largest Black political association, the National Association for the "Advancement of Colored People" founded in 1909, still attests. This is, however, probably the only context in which the use of the word is appropriate today. In the Sixties Colored took on racist connotations, and Colored boy was the insult that tipped off Sidney Poitier in They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (1970).
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The 1970s and 1980s gave birth to the many hyphenated terms that describe modern America's ethnic minorities ("Irish-Americans", "Italian-Americans", "Hispanic-Americans", "Asian-Americans", etc.). Words such as "Eurasian" or "Afroeuropean" had long been used by anthropologists. The Black community chose "Afro-American", which had been used in writing since the beginning of the century. In an attempt to put the two components of the term on equal footing, "Afro-American" gave way to "African-American" and later "African American". The hyphen was deleted as it implied the idea of a sub-category. Other suggestions did not catch on, such as "AfriAmerican", "AfraAmerican", "Afrikan" or even more creative inventions such as "Afrindeur American" (short for "African-Indian-European" in reference to the multiracial origins of most Black Americans) or "Dobanian" (short for "Descendant of Black African Natives in the American North"), which found few supporters. "African American" did not gain acceptance without arousing debates, even if these disputes aroused less passion than those surrounding the change from Colored and Negro to Black. African Americans were quick to adopt the term. Problems arose with the 1990 census since many Blacks did not identify as black and added African American as a category instead. Jesse Jackson defended the new term, which he used and explained at a press conference in December 1988: compared to Black, African American expresses a sense of belonging to a culture and, more important, creates a bridge with the African continent. It evokes slavery and acculturation while claiming an African heritage. African American emphasizes an African Diaspora rather than an American minority. Roughly ten years after the new name was first promoted, it is now accepted and used by all. Africa is once again part of the name of Black Americans, as if the quest for identity had ended where it began. Returning to cultural origins that should never have been renounced, Black Americans have come full circle.
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Because biracial remains vague, some prefer to use terms such as "AfroAsian", "AfroEuropean", "EuroAsian", "AfroHispanic", "African Latino", etc. But what about a child whose four grandparents are Black, Asian, White and Hispanic? An easy way out is to use the term "multiracial", which like "multicultural" recently came into vogue. Yet, who in America cannot be said to be multiracial? Don't the terms used to describe Blacks refer to a culture, after all, rather than a race?
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"bell hooks" (who does not capitalize her name) is a particularly accessible critic of popular culture. In her many books, she identifies herself as an "Afrofemcentric" - that is, "afrocentrist and feminist". Michele Wallace, working on similar issues, calls herself an "Afrofemlezcentrist", meaning an "afrocentrist, a feminist and a lesbian" (referring to her sexuality but more important, to lesbian culture). The late Black poet Essex Hemphill spoke openly of his homosexuality before the term "afroqueercentric" was coined. Will these words influence the way we speak of ourselves?
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