Margaret Lee's paper

[Michael H Covarrubias]

According the the OED:

"Although both African and African-American were widely used in the United
States in the 19th century, the adoption of African-American as a preferred term
among black Americans dates from the late 1960s and early 1970s (particularly
after an April 1972 conference at which Ramona Edelin, president of the National
Urban Coalition, proposed its use). The term gained widespread acceptance
following its endorsement by the Reverend Jesse Jackson (b. 1941) during his
presidential nomination campaign in 1988."

-Comment on entry for African-American


> ________________________________
>
> From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Margaret Lee
> Sent: Fri 12/1/2006 5:29 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Jesse Jackson wants to ban "N-word"
>
>
>
> FWIW, this is an excerpt from a paper I wrote on the subject a few years =
> ago:
>
>   The shift from Black to African American occurred in 1988 when Dr. =
> Ramona Edelin, President of the National Urban Coalition, proposed that =
> the next year's meeting be called, not the Black Summit, but the African =
> American Summit. The purpose of this change was to reassess the =
> condition of blacks in America while "linking Africans in North America =
> with those on the Continent of Africa and  throughout the Diaspora =
> "(Smitherman, in Mufwene et al., 1998, 213).
>
>   Margaret Lee
>
>
> Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>   The Reverend Jesse Jackson is the first and only person, except for a
> few members of this list, that I know of to argue for the replacement
> of "black" by "African-American." Well, I do know that the idea
> replacing "black" with "African-African didn't spring full-blown from
> the Reverend Jackson's forrid. Rather, he merely jumped upon the
> bandwagon and made the concept his own. And I'm aware that there exist
> other spokesmen for Black, uh, African-American America who have also
> argued in favor of "African-American."nor do I have any idea of what =
> their arguments are. Indeed, I'm
> totally unaware even of the Reverend Jackson's arguments in favor of
> "African-American," given that ignoring his and anyone else's
> arguments, to quote Ike Turner, "was my plan from the ve'y beginnin'."
>
> -Wilson
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org