African-American is Beautiful
My friend teaches an intro course to comparative politics. This quarter, the class has focused a lot on political protests in South Africa.
my friend: "Yeah, these poor kids want to be PC, so they don't want to say 'Blacks' when discussing the protests in Johannesburg."
me: "Oh, wow, this must drive them crazy--don't want to say 'Black,' but can't say African-American!"
my friend: "Oh, yes, they can. And did."
my friend: "Yeah, these poor kids want to be PC, so they don't want to say 'Blacks' when discussing the protests in Johannesburg."
me: "Oh, wow, this must drive them crazy--don't want to say 'Black,' but can't say African-American!"
my friend: "Oh, yes, they can. And did."
Labels: Funny
posted by slickaphonic at 10:53 PM
2 Comments:
Yeah, I hate that __-American thing too.
--A good number of Carribean-Americans can't stand being called African-American.
--Since many people use `white' instead of European-American, but the __-American form for every other race/ethnicity, we exacerbate the concept of a base group and Others.
--Latin Americans are quick to point out that being American does not necessarily mean from the United States of America; it could just as readily mean being from the United States of Mexico, which also happens to be in America. Spanish has the word `Estadounidense' to mean `person from the USA'. [That's what we get for having the most generically named country in the world. How can anybody complain about modern bureacracy when the _name of the country_ is an acronym for a name chosen by committee.]
Yes, I've never liked or encouraged the Other-American distinction. I did have to think for a while about whether or not I should use race as a description--
"Who is Bob?"
"The Chinese guy."
I decided that yes, it's valid, because if only one person was wearing neon pink, it'd be the most efficient way to identify the person to others--so, when skin color is a unique identifying feature, s'okay.
But if someone had no nose, or long hair, or whatever, and it stuck out among the crowd, I'd use that...whatever's handy, you know? But saying __-American is akin to saying, "They're American, but they're black." That doesn't make much sense to me (unless they're actually from Africa--like first gen or something--in which case, I'd probably say the person is Nigerian or Congolese, or whatevs, anyway).
I mean, would you say, "They're obese-American" or "pretty-American" or "geek-American" or "large-nosed American"? Nope.
Hey, do you know anything about the racial classification they use in Brazil? I vaguely remember taking a class which discussed race as a cultural matter rather than biological; I distinctly remember Brazil being a prime example as they had vastly different racial categories than what you'd find in the US...but I don't remember the specifics.
Hmmm.
Oh, and Berlin Bowie is good stuff.
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