Fwd: "AAVE" (the abbrev. itself)

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

an appeal to people who ought to know; i'll post anything further i get
on this...

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "John R. Rickford" <rickford at stanford.edu>
> Date: October 6, 2004 9:33:07 AM PDT
> To: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
> Cc: Geneva Smitherman <smither4 at pilot.msu.edu>
> Subject: Re: Fwd: "AAVE" (the abbrev. itself)
>
> I'm sure there are earlier attestations than 1993, but probably not
> much earlier, since the term African American itself was only formally
> introduced by Jesse Jackson in 1988.  (It had begun to be used, as a
> replacement for Afro-American and Black, before then.)  I'll include
> an extract from a website
> (www.africultures.com/anglais/articles_anglais/41cremieux.htm) about
> it at the end...
>
> From: www.africultures.com/anglais/articles_anglais/41cremieux.htm
>
> "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."