I find the term African American offensive. Do you?

Question

If anything blacks should be known simply as Americans or black Americans. The black man was in America before America became America. Lose the African bull sht, seriously.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the terms black or white. They are descriptive terms like fat or skinny. Our African heritage was already stripped from us. We are the quintessential American.

Answer 1

If you remove the term African American, I believe that you'll be denying Black Americans their heritage. It's almost as though you're denying that the slave trade ever existed. Mind you, I'm speaking as a white anglo-saxon, so what do I know?

Answer 2

African American refers to racial derivation. In the earliest days of the American colony, when all the immigrants to what would become the United States were from England, it was assumed that if you lived in New England (as the colony was known) you were from Old England. Anyone else was given a racial tag. The Scottish-Americans, the Irish-Americans, the Polish-Americans, the Swedish-Americans etc.etc.etc. Probably because these people eventually blended into the main stream (and they were difficult to pick out with any certainty because they were all Caucasians) the racial designator was dropped.
The same did not happen for Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans or African Americans.
Lately, the Japanese American and Chinese American have been more or less assimilated and their racial designator has been dropped. All that now remains is the Black citizens, and it's getting to be time that they lost that designator too, but there are HUGE numbers of Black people who WANT to continue to be distinguished from the rest of the U.S. citizenry. And that makes it very difficult.
Also, the citizens of the United States are not the only Americans -- North America covers two other large countries, Canada and Mexico, and each of these groups call themselves North Americans as well.
So perhaps the solution is to find some other name for ALL residents of the US, and just ignore the racial origins completely.

Answer 3

Why do people think that all black people come from Africa? I'd be offended if all of society labeled me as something that I'm not. Should we start calling white people European Americans? Even those without any European heritage? It's ridiculous the way people feel some great need to be politically correct yet so amazingly ignorant at the same time...

Answer 4

Well, i like it a lot better than the N word. But seriously i believe it is just another way to seperate people( to keep us in a state of constant division). I mean honestly why can't we all just be called Americans, we all live in America after all. And when Africans come to the USA they still want to be called African. Just like the English, French, ect..I have lived in the USA all my life, thats all i know ( the american way of life).

Answer 5

Not offensive, but sorta silly and PC. How come there is african-american but all the other ethnicities aren't hyphenated. Why don't people refer to me as a german, irish, english, puerto rican-american?

What is wrong with white, black and brown? Or even yellowish brown, reddish brown, pinkish white? We describe people as "short, thin, pale, blue eyed with red hair" but if we describe someone as "black" all of a sudden it's offensive and people are all "Oh why do you notice skin color? Can't we get past that?"

How could we not notice skin color anymore than eye color or hair color? Of the color of someone's clothes. Those are all the things that make people different.

If people prefer the term african american I will use it but otherwise I use black. I have several nigerian and senegalese friends but I usually just refer to them as black, not african-american, even though they are actually african-american. Even typing it out every time is a pain.

Here's another pc thing that bugs me. No one would dream of saying "colored people" it sounds so 50s but "people of color" is so trendy now. Isn't that just like saying blue jeans vs jeans that are blue?

Answer 6

I'm of European heritage, but I don't call myself European-American. I consider myself American. However, the United States is VERY MUCH identified as being dominated by people of European desent. So, for a person to call themselves African-American, they are (maybe) saying, "I am an American, but I am also pround of my African roots, even though my people have had a long history of abuse by European-Americans."

Answer 7

I can't use that term. I don't call myself a European American. If a white person born in S.Africa moves to America, Are they African American. If you live in the US and was born here you should call yourself an American.

Answer 8

I agree with you, but I'll go a little further and say that we shouldn't even be noticing skin color anymore. Come on, this is 2006 already. Keep the culture, lose the racism.

Answer 9

I agree 100%. Almost none of the blacks in America are really from Africa. It's really silly.

Answer 10

i don't really care for it myself, but i think cause we're the ones trying to get used to it. Similar to our parents and grandparents who had to get used to the term "black" after being called "colored" or "*****" for so long. The next generation won't even think about it when they refer to themselves as African (or Afro) American. Just as we don't think about it when we say "Black".

But, I'm with you, let's ditch any adjectives and just call ourselves Americans.