In my lifetime I’ve seen the polite word for people of African descent go from “colored” to “negro” to “black” to “African American.”
I have a real problem with the last one. There is culturally a huge difference between an individual whose ancestors were brought over in slave ships 200 years ago, and someone who has recently entered the country from Africa.
The descendents of slaves, the people we commonly refer to as blacks, have grown up with all of the history of racism in this country, with what their parents lived through, and their grandparents, and… They will have a cultural attitude that reflects that background. And that attitude will include an edginess about racial relations brought on by that history, as well as the current climate in the country.
By contrast, someone who grew up in Africa, or is a second generation immigrant, does not have that family history. Does not have that edginess. Such a person comes to this country with the same optimism as any immigrant group–Irish, Italian, Hispanic, Asian…
Such a person has grown up in a country where, as Richard Pryor once described, the drunk is black, the shopkeeper is black, the policeman is black, the crook is black, the judge is black, the mayor is black…
I have known a few Africans in my life, and there is nothing about their attitude, their composure, their view of life that fits into a stereotypical view of American Blacks. There has been a freshness to them, a sereneness, a can-do attitude. They have that optimistic America-is-a-land-of-opportunity attitude that immigrants often have.
It’s said Obama was our first black president. I don’t think that’s quite accurate. He is of Kenyan descent, a second generation immigrant. He didn’t exhibit any of the edginess that exists between American Blacks and Whites. He was able to look at issues of racism from a more detached, intellectual place. A more innocent and idealistic, less threatening place.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe using the term African American to unify the image of American Blacks with their ancestors is brilliant, and the best way to get both Blacks and Whites in this country to finally let our racial history slip into the past.
