Learn English – How is the term “African-American” politically correct

american-englisheuphemismsnorth-american-englishpolitical-correctness

First, a note: This question is meant to have no explicit or implicit political/sociological connotation whatsoever, and is indeed born of actual and deep curiosity as to what is in the author's present view a confusing peculiarity in the English Language.

The term 'African-American' is supposed to be a politically correct term for American individuals of the Negroid/Australoid race. However, instead of being more inclusive, the term seems, at least to me, to be flatly alienating to such individuals by labelling them as in an implicit and subliminal manner different than other Americans and connecting them (purely racially) with Africa which in the greatest likeliness may not even be their or their families' continent of origin.

Then, why is 'African-American' considered an inclusive term?

Best Answer

So you want to assure us that your question has no "political" or "sociological" connotations. Well, OK, I'll pretend to believe you, mostly because I can't read your mind. But it's difficult to believe that someone with an "actual and deep curiosity" didn't hie himself to an easily available source like Wikipedia to clear up his confusion. But let me help:

  • There's nothing "peculiar" about the term African-American unless you count the fact that it's related to that Peculiar Institution, chattel slavery in the United States. Starting in the late 1970s, African-American replaced its predecessor term Afro-American, which the OED can trace in print to 1853. If you'd gone to Wikipedia, you'd have found a picture of a parade float dating from 1911 with the label "Afro-Americans".
  • The term is not "politically correct", unless you use that term to describe the practice of calling people by the names they choose to be called by.
  • The term is not a euphemism, which is a polite substitute for a vulgarity. During the modern US civil rights movement, roughly 1950-1970, Americans chose to belong to the group that called people with dark skin niggers and nigras and those who called these people Negroes. Those so-labeled embraced the word black to describe themselves, and they adopted African-American in parallel.
  • Given the preceding bullet point, it should be clear that the term is not "alienating* at all, let alone "flatly", to those who've adopted it.
  • The term is not meant to be inclusive. It's the description of US citizens who share a common historical and social background, in much the same way as the terms German-American and Irish-American. The reason that the term specifies a continent rather than a country is that 1) at the time of the slave trade, there were few European-style nation states in Africa and 2) those operating the slave system destroyed the personal histories of the slaves.
  • The term is an overt label. It therefore cannot be implicit (i.e., not plainly stated) or subliminal (i.e., not consciously discernible).
  • There is no such thing as the "Negroid race"; that's an outmoded anthropological notion that fails the test of human genetics. The term African-American embraces those in the US who share the history and sociology of those with what is called "black" skin, most of whom had ancestors forcibly taken from their African homes.
  • The preceding bullet point tells you that the term isn't "purely racial", which should be clear from the broad spectrum of skin colors among African-Americans. The "purely racial" motivations belonged to white Americans who defined the racial classifications according to blood lines. Louisiana kept track of "black" ancestry to five decimal places.
Related Topic