Why are we called african american?, Why Are we caled black? were brown

In the late 1980’s it was settled that African American was the best term for “blacks”. I’m a “black” but I don’t get how I’m African American. I’m American, I was born here so were my parents. Ancestors however I’m not sure? Say they were slaves from Africa..I was still born in America. Isn’t that one way how you become an American? Whats really crazy is a “black” person born in the UK is still at times call a African American? What? Their not even from America. The term is just switched up so much.

Thats why I just say I’m American. The term “black” doesn’t fit any human in this world. We should be called if any color brown. We are different shades of brown. “Brown American” has a ring to it? But that’s what we really are. Does the term “white” fit too? Everyone is a “colored” Right?

A white, yellow or “brown” man and their parents are born in Africa so they are African. No way around that. But say that white man comes to America with a white woman also a African and they have children. What are his children then? They should be what we are called right? But no its not like that.

Whites aren’t called European-Americans? On test at school when we have to mark our race (which is so silly…why does that even matter) the only option for whites is “white”, while “browns” have “black/African American”

I just don’t get how other humans can say what people are and it settled. while it doesn’t apply to all.

African-American vs. American-- youtube.

Please leave any feedback.

-Thanks Travarus.

Tags: Are, Why, african, american?, are, black?, brown, caled, called, we, More…were

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Permalink Reply by PolarVibez on January 16, 2010 at 9:20pm

i think I get where you are coming from for the most part. If I'm an African American and the Indigenous people are Native " Americans" then why do Europeon Americans so often get the distinction of being simply "American". How are they more American than me and my ancestors who've been here just as long as them or more American than the people who were here before all of us. Essentially we are all from somewhere else. So to be fair we should all be simply american or have the respective continental prefix before "American". The short answer to "why" could be of course racism. It's a way to trivilise our American experience. But...

I think the main reason African American sticks is due to the liberation and civil rights struggles of yesteryear. For most of us, unless your name is Alex Haley, year zero of your past basically begins on this soil. Our names were stripped of us. We were only left with fragments of our previous existence, certain ways of preparing food, stories, rhythyms, pieces of our past spirtuality, strains of which find their way into a culture that was forced upon us. Thus creating a hybrid culture. African/American. What the fuck is purely american anyway? Pretty much everything we have here is borrowed from somewhere else. We are essentially a nation of bastards.

Many of us just settled on African American because it's way of not forgetting. Perhaps it's more necessary for us as 'brown" people to stress the distinction because it just solidifies our link with where our ancestors came from. Our people didn't choose to come here. I have no problem being African American. Essentially I am because my father is Nigerian but even if he wasn't I would feel exactly the same. My last name is not even my own. It's a corrruption of some English family's surname. So yeah, put that african in front of my shit. it's the LEAST you can do. This in no way cheapens the rich experience of my my people who've been on this land for centuries . But it's important to me personally and maybe a whole lot of other "Black" or "Brown" people to make that connection, even if it is in name only.

And we do have some complexions out there that are as dark as the letters you're reading. Believe that.

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Permalink Reply by Madamoiselle De Sade on January 16, 2010 at 9:35pm

I resent being called "African American" when no one blood related to me was born in Africa. Why can't I just be an American, my folks have certainly been here much longer than the folks of whites who get to be "Americans". Racism.

America is a melting pot, most cowboys were Mexican, black or Native- so many lies are out there about the very basics of what is American.

I am the people and the places that birthed me and other people like me and all of that happened in this country.

I hate being forced to (ironically) identify with another people rather than my own. through a misnomer.

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Permalink Reply by LesYpersound on January 17, 2010 at 12:48am

i call myself a black american and i dislike hyphenated identities...the two words aren't two exclusive definitions united simply by a hyphen because being BOTH black (or asian) american means something in and of itself.

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Permalink Reply by sceneless on January 17, 2010 at 2:15am

LesYpersound said:

i call myself a black american and i dislike hyphenated identities...the two words aren't two exclusive definitions united simply by a hyphen because being BOTH black (or asian) american means something in and of itself.

Same here. I call myself black american. I'm not from africa or the carribean, and neither are my parents or my grandparents. I'm of african dissent, but am not culturally of any african nation. I know very little about the land itself and even less about what part my ancestors were from. I hope to visit someday and experience the many cultures, but right now all I or my parents know is America.

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Permalink Reply by PolarVibez on January 17, 2010 at 4:29am

Being an African American dosen't make me less "American". Being simply "American" will not erase my african past. Much respect to my parents, grandparents, great, great greats and etc, but the people that came before them are not chicken shit either. They endured some fucked up shit and survived it just to bring our first ancestors who were born here into existence, which in turn brought our Black "American" asses into existence. I choose to remember and remind others as well. Since the fact that I can't call them by their names or remember where they came from. Being African, visually and consciously is all that links me with them. It is all that allows me to honor them. So I'm African all day. American by default.

White folks love to big up their heritage whether it be Irish, Scottish, English, German, Italian etc. No one tells them: "but you weren't born in Ireland...". Why should it be different for me?

Let's just change the name of the website while we're at it.. It should be called just "Punk" then. Oh wait a minute most of us don't really identify as punks either. Who the hell are we, what is our identity? I forgot, We're all Americans. That pretty much sums up every little nuance of our being. (lol)

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Permalink Reply by Madamoiselle De Sade on January 17, 2010 at 4:40am

American kinda does describe every nuance of my being. If I went to England- it would be obvious I am American, if I went to Japan they might think I'm African because media depiction of America is all yellow haired people with blue eyes and by refusing to identify as American ourselves we allow this misrepresentation to continue in our own heads.

The only thing I hate about being American is my accent which clues people in on where I'm form without me saying so much as nary a location. Could be worse, could be Bostonian.

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Permalink Reply by PolarVibez on January 17, 2010 at 5:08am

This is a sad reality but we as black people aren't the ones who are responsible for this. The media is Anglocentric. An american with roots in India or a latino american would go through the exact same thing. A Japanese American would probably blend right in at first glance but would be "outed" sooner or later. That's my whole point. We look like our ancestors. They are still a part of us. So why should we completely ignore that by hiding behind a homogenous term?

Mlle d. Sade said:

if I went to Japan they might think I'm African because media depiction of America is all yellow haired people with blue eyes and by refusing to identify as American ourselves we allow this misrepresentation to continue in our own heads.

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Permalink Reply by Madamoiselle De Sade on January 17, 2010 at 5:21am

Because we have as much a right to that "homogeneous" (American can mean many different things and it should mean many different things- this is the problem by not claiming our rights to be "American" we've allowed "them" to put us in a separate category and allowed "American" to equal "white") term as anyone else. Perhaps even more. I think we all know who our ancestors were (which is even up for debate, our ancestry did not stop in Africa) but expecting every black person to identify with Africa (whether or not anyone in their family is actually from Africa) is as offensive as expecting every person of Japanese descent in America to run around in a kimono or dress like a Samurai and talk about/practice Shinto even though no one in their immediate family did or is from the island of Japan.

It's a brand new world.

Looking like something is almost meaningless, it's almost like judging a book by it's cover. It shouldn't be about "looking" like one thing or the other but about being something. Someone may "look" like their name is Kumiko Ibe from Tokyo but they are really Amanda Hernandez from Toledo, Ohio.

Where do we draw the line with this ancestor talk?

PolarVibez said:

This is a sad reality but we as black people aren't the ones who are resopnsible for this. The media is Anglocentric. An american with roots in India or a latino american would go through the exact same thing. A Japanese American would probably blend right in at first glance but would be "outed" sooner or later. That's my whole point. We look like our ancestors. They are still a part of us. So why should we completely ignore that by hiding behind a homogenous term?

Mlle d. Sade said:
if I went to Japan they might think I'm African because media depiction of America is all yellow haired people with blue eyes and by refusing to identify as American ourselves we allow this misrepresentation to continue in our own heads.

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Permalink Reply by PolarVibez on January 17, 2010 at 5:57am

Looking like something is meaningless, you have a point there. And I don't expect every Black person to identify with Africa. It's a choice. Whether we identify or not dosen't change the reality though. I've earned the right to be here. So if I went abroad I would tell some one in a heartbeat "I'm American" or I'm from America". I just don't balk at being called African or African American as well like some people do because that is also part of who I am. And it's not like it's a dirty lie. I'm sure there are other ethnicities entagled in my geneology but my Africaness is the one that I can claim with certainty.

Mlle d. Sade said:

Because we have as much a right to that "homogeneous" (American can mean many different things and it should mean many different things- this is the problem by not claiming our rights to be "American" we've allowed "them" to put us in a separate category and allowed "American" to equal "white") term as anyone else. Perhaps even more. I think we all know who our ancestors were (which is even up for debate, our ancestry did not stop in Africa) but expecting every black person to identify with Africa (whether or not anyone in their family is actually from Africa) is as offensive as expecting every person of Japanese descent in America to run around in a kimono or dress like a Samurai and talk about/practice Shinto even though no one in their immediate family did or is from the island of Japan.

It's a brand new world.

Looking like something is almost meaningless, it's almost like judging a book by it's cover. It shouldn't be about "looking" like one thing or the other but about being something. Someone may "look" like their name is Kumiko Ibe from Tokyo but they are really Amanda Hernandez from Toledo, Ohio.

Where do we draw the line with this ancestor talk?

PolarVibez said:
This is a sad reality but we as black people aren't the ones who are resopnsible for this. The media is Anglocentric. An american with roots in India or a latino american would go through the exact same thing. A Japanese American would probably blend right in at first glance but would be "outed" sooner or later. That's my whole point. We look like our ancestors. They are still a part of us. So why should we completely ignore that by hiding behind a homogenous term?

Mlle d. Sade said:
if I went to Japan they might think I'm African because media depiction of America is all yellow haired people with blue eyes and by refusing to identify as American ourselves we allow this misrepresentation to continue in our own heads.

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Permalink Reply by Kendrick Irvin on January 17, 2010 at 8:47am

Dude I love this topic.
I'm not from Africa, never been there in my life. Unless I come from Africa and then gain US ciitzenship, how you call me American. I think it's a way to keep us serparated. If they just called black people Americans, I feel that in 10 to 20 years all this racial BS would go away. Strange thing is it was the black people who wanted to be called African American in the 90's.

As far as the white people go, who knows where they are from. They could be Africans too, to be honest. No one is worried about that. Most people these day can't really be considered one race. Interacial sex has been happening for a very long time, and has produced babies. No one is one thing anymore if you looked down a family tree and was being honest about it.

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Permalink Reply by Kendrick Irvin on January 17, 2010 at 8:54am

I'm not African by any means. I've met Africans before, I'm not one of them. How can you answer to African, when you aren't from Africa? What if you have Native American in you ( which you probably do somewhere) are you going to go around answering to Iroqouis? I think not.

Oh and just because I hate the man, Fuck Jesse Jackson. Just sayin.

NpyHedBlkChld said:

well i look at it as this...my heritage is african and black seminole which are seminole natives and escaped and free africans. I was born in american so that would make me american. African americans are indeed african by heritage and american by nationality (that means by chance). Jesse jackson and other prominent civil rights folks of yesteryear came together and decided on african american. in the past "black", "negro", "darky", the n word were all insults adjectives that were used as nouns. African American is a much better term because it is a modified noun which gives much respect to the reality that we are African by heritage and american in terms of the nation where we live at.

Personally i only answer to the term african...i do not and will not refer to myself as an american because with respect to my fellow people of african descent and various other groups stateside and worldwide america simply does not live up to the ideals that it likes to boast about.

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Permalink Reply by Kendrick Irvin on January 17, 2010 at 10:05am

Dude thats a pretty small minded statement. I'm not an African American, I hate the term. Just because I'm dark doesn't mean shit, you sound like a white person yourself with that statement.

Not all white people are Honkies. Trust me , I know I'm around them all the time. My kids are half white. They are in now way Honkies or African. They are half one color and half another color. They are all American.

Sonic Speed Society said:

SImple Answer here broham, you're ancestors came frum Afika hence your darky skin, and ur a damn African American

I ain't rocket sciences and stuff

And white people do have a special name, it's called "Honky-American" they came from Honkland