"African-American"

[Laurence Urdang]

I should like to disburden myself of one matter before I die, and that is the terms like African-American, Greek-American, German-American, etc.  There was a time, arising early the 1904s, when such terms were considered offensive and those who were so designated marked "hyphenated Americans."  The point was that the emphasis was (and in my opinion, still is) that Americans are Americans, and that dragging along a marker as to their origin is likely to reflect prejudice.  In more recent times, that earlier emphasis has been discarded because those who bore such a designation wanted to retain their "heritage," which usually meant that if they ate a lot of pasta, they were proud to be Italian-Americans, a lot of pickled pigs' feet, Polish-American, a lot of bratwurst, German-American, etc.  (Last week was Puerto-Rican Day in New York City, with parades and all; today, the parades are to celebrate something called Gay Pride.  I have not heard the designation, "Gay-American,"
 though its appearance wouldn't surprise me.)
  (The only times I have ever cared about the sexual proclivities of another person were when I had sex on my mind, and I have never cared about another's racial "condition," if that is the right word.)
  I am not suggesting that those who wish to retain a reference---no matter how minor a glimpse---of their heritage should avoid adopting a hyphenated designation, but that it should be emphasized that they are now Americans (if they, indeed, are), born or naturalized or awaiting the latter status.  It seems to me that those hyphenated terms can be interpreted to mean something like, 'Although I am an American citizen, I am really a Russian (or whatever), and I am in America purely out of expediency.'  In many cases, what many hyphenated people can look back on is not so much a great tradition of culture and all the rest, but of incarceration, torture, harassment, murder, deprivation of dreamt-of civil rights, and all the other pleasures enjoyed in the Old Country, including sparse air-conditioning, outdoor plumbing, etc.; the rest seem to have been motivated to emigrate to the U.S. for financial reasons, though not, necessarily out of greed.
  Whatever the reasons might have been, it strikes me as odd and, at best, impolite, to treat the U.S. as a sort of evil stepmother, when it has very often (though not very much lately) behaved like a welcoming, benevolent aunt.
  However, to coin a cliche, any port in a storm.
  The other factor that might well motivate African-Americans, specifically, to adopt the designation is to make sure that they are perceived as being black rather than red, white, or yellow, for their color cannot be told from their names alone unless they have adopted a name from some foreign language.  We have American Indians, too, who are named Rain-in-the-face, Silverfox, etc., and retain those names (or reconstruct them) to stress their ethnic connection.  It is not likely that a Chang is going to be thought of as being of German, Italian, or Slavic background, so those Negroes (as we were taught was the proper, polite name for them till recently, when Blacks took over) whose names were Johnson, Jackson, Clay, etc., had to make a statement: some affiliated with other Blacks by calling themselves African-Americans; others with a religious set, giving themselves names like Muhammad Ali, unlikely to be taken as a Jew or a Russian; and others as an unknown quantity, like
 X, as in Malcolm.
  For some, it is a sensitive issue, I am sure, even though their separation from Africa, through no fault or choice of their own, might have placed them in the U.S. generations before many American-Firsters who would today deny entire classes of immigrants rights to immigrate, which were accorded quite freely to their forebears.
  Sorry, but this may be emergingas too political a subject to earn a proper place in the letters for the ADS (as far as designation goes) or even the ANS (with strict regard to naming principles).  L. Urdang

  Old Lyme


Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: On the non-utility of "African-American"
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An article in last week's Sports Illustrated noted that a certain
ice-hockey player was the first "African-American" to hold some record
or other for performance. (As readers can tell, I'm not a particular
fan of this sport.) A letter to the editor published in this week's SI
pointed out that, given that the player cited was born and reared in
Calgary, it would have been more appropriate to refer to him as an
"African-Canadian," even though a complete genealogy might show that
he was ultimately descended from escaped African-American slaves.

-Wilson
-
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

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