Why the term African American?? How many black americans were actually born in Africa?

Question

I mean I don't say Latin American (well unless they are from South America). I don't say Mexican american, Chinese american, Russian american...etc etc.

It always seemed weird to me. Aren't we all Americans?

Answer 1

You pose a very good question! I don't know! I consider myself Black-American and prefer this term because it relates to skin color not heritage. I am an American whose is of color. My heritage is Native American and Irish on my fathers side and Bajan and British on my mothers side. Wikipedia states that an African-American is a person whose ancesters are predominately from Sub-Saharan Africa, which in my case and probably alot of others does not apply. My aunt laughs at this "African-American" stuff because it feels foreign. We don't know anyone from Africa and don't know anybody there.

People have got to get it together! What it boils down to is that we are all AMERICANS first and foremost! 9/11 should have taught us that! We have people who are out to kill us and they don't care what color we are or where our ancestors came from. All they know is that we live here and we're the enemy! While there is beauty in all cultures, it should not cloud our focus on being all American. We should just drop all the other labels and just be one America United! By the way, love your question! I've been contemplating this for a while! Thanks!

Answer 2

The term African American is used precisely because it has a reciprocal in every other group. Because each person can denote their ancestry and their American heritage in a similar way. Most African Americans consider themselves Black. Lots of whites consider them self to be white however few people consider them self red or yellow instead they associate with a country of ancestral origin. African American is not a black thing it is an official designation which prevents people from being refered to as yellow or red.


The old terms use to be negroid, Caucasoid and mongoloid. at the time blacks didn't have a problem with Negro, white were ok with Caucasian but who wants to be call a mongrel. and notice that there was just three so Arab, Indian, Asian, etc.. anyone who wasn't black or white was considered mongrel.



I don't know how many African Americans were born in Africa but a little over 6% were born in the Caribbean.

Answer 3

I dont think people are ashamed of being called African American Its just most black people in America never been to Africa most black people including Jamaican or whatever place you come from dont even have African customs so its like youre about as african as a german person fresh off the boat

Answer 4

People confuse language designations with race. A Hispanic can be of any race and there are millions of them that are negroids, mulattos and Caucasoids. Most of the invaders from the South are metizos. People also confuse geographical designations with race. An "Asian " does not tell you anything about race. Many "Asians" are not Mongoloid. People also confuse nationality with race. I use racial terms or offshoots of them. An "African American" would be a person that moved from the continent of Africa & has become a citizen here. That could be a person from North Africa that is not negroid or a nig from "black" Sub-Sahara Africa. It could be a White person from the formerly civilized rich South Africa which has now slided back into stone age savagry.
The N word in my older dictionary is defined as a term of contempt for the negro. So the word fits.
Why use the N word?

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Rahowa

Answer 5

African Americans call ourselves that because most have ancestors that were brought here through the slave trade. we just want to hold onto the term African because that is where are roots are. I don't know whether my ancestor were stolen from Nigerian or Ghana or any of the many other countries on the west coast of Africa. We can't say oh my great great grandmother came to America in 1805 from Italy...etc, so we hold onto the little information we know: that we are African. Even though we may have never stepped foot on the content, but we still want to recognize that that is where are ancestors are from. What's so bad about that?

Why are white people so interested about what we call ourselves? It's getting annoying.

Answer 6

Yippee for you.
If you'd spent 10 minutes in a book on anthropology, you'd know that actually, northern Africa was the 'birthplace' of ALL people, regardless of skin color.
All the chest-thumping and insistance on what we call each other don't make a hill of **** in the long run.
But I don't think I'll be calling any black man African American unless I know for certain that he's from Africa. Then, he'd be just African.
Get it?

Answer 7

Of course we're all Americans! This is what the Civil Rights Movement was about. Equal treatment. Unfortunately, we'll never be seen as equal so the PC government has to distinguish us by race.

Answer 8

A lot more than there used to be. Millions of blue-gum Africans, such as Sudanese and Somalis, are now flooding into the U.S., courtesy of the UN and the churches. I wonder if they consider themselves Sudanese-Americans or African Americans.

Answer 9

You will address me as African American. I insist my family has traseded our ROOTS back to Africa in the state of Egypt where they were once Pharaohs. Before we were kidnapped assaulted raped and sold into slavery By the white man. So in a word we are African,yet stranded in America. And we ain't not going no where.

Answer 10

oh yeah? why when someone is describing a person they say that black guy instead of that american? we keep it because we all need to identify and remeber that we are in america not because we migrated like the other cultures, but stolen from the motherland from force. and since we need to remeber that although we are viewed as inferiro. we have a culture and legacy.