African American

[Bob Haas]

Interesting sidebar: yesterday, David Lewis spoke yesterday on NPR's TALK OF
THE NATION about his biography of W.E.B. DuBois.  In volume two, he used the
term Afra-American.  I'd not heard this before, but Lewis explained that it
was a term that was contemporaneous to DuBois.  BTW, it was Afra-, no Afro-,
before anyone decides to jump on that.

> From: AAllan at AOL.COM
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 14:58:05 EDT
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: African American
>
> << Have you traced the origins of "African American" at all?  If so, I would
> be interested in seeing your findings, as I have done research on this
> myself.
>
> Fred Shapiro >>
>
> I'm sure Fred knows this, but perhaps others on our list don't, that there
> are two significant articles on "African American" in the Summer 1991 issue
> of American Speech (Vol 66 No 2):
> "'What Is Africa to Me?': Language, Ideology, and African American" by Geneva
> Smitherman
> and
> "The Politicization of Changing Terms of Self-Reference among American Slave
> Descendants" by John Baugh. This latter especially deals with the "Jackson
> factor" in introducing the term. - Allan Metcalf