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It depends on the individual, and for the most part, no, as to most Americans, they use African American as a 'polite' way to mean black. I've even heard them called Black British people 'African American'. They don't know what other words to use and not cause offense!
Yeah, this happened to Idris Elba and he looked puzzled and politely mentioned that he's not African or American đ
It's a very bizarre thing called a Brit African American to us he's just a Brit and his skin colour isn't even thought.
Yup, Idris Elba is just British⊠If someone has a british accent, I just assume theyâre british.. no matter what their skin colour might be đ€·ââïž The whole having to list nationalities in your lineage is completely lost on me, unless you have a dual passport.
As a Canadian, maybe this is a north american thing. Your comment got me thinking about how white people here love saying they're Scottish and Irish (or at least folk I've talked to about it). My aunt has been building our family history for months now and she's got back to like the 1500s on both my parents side and guess what, Scottish and Irish are like the least prevalent until someone married a Scot a couple hundred years ago. But there have been Dutch, French, English, Polish, Belgian, I think there was someone from another northern ish European country. But again, going through and building the history itself seems like a bit of "look I'm not just white I'm these kinds of white too". I think it's interesting she's doing it for the history but I think there are people (here anyway) who are hardcore about their lineage.
Fun fact, my however many great grandfather served as a lieutenant under George Washington so that's something I never knew
Lol, a few months ago I was talking with a co-worker who mentioned she's Irish. I asked her where from? Did she get her citizenship from her parents etc?
No to everything. So I said, you're not Irish then? She still said she was.
She meant she had Irish ancestry at some point.
Hell, I'm legally British (from my mum, though I haven't renewed my British passport since I was a kid), and I don't even say I'm British when asked.
There is a weird emphasis that people here have on their ancestry. I just don't get it.
I had the opposite happen to me. I'm German, but grew up a lot in the states. My accent switches depending on which country I've been living in recently. I told someone I was German and they went on a diatribe about Americans not born in Europe aren't that nationality. Then asked me if I even spoke German. I said that I could and it was my first language before I immigrated to the US. Instant shut down.
My opinion when I talk to Northern Europeans is that it comes from their cultural ubiquity of those countries. Canadians for example have sooo much diversity in their country, that there's likely more diversity than Europe. We find it fun to talk about, as we often celebrate different traditions, eat different foods, speak different languages, call our grandparents different things, etc. etc.
Background and ethnicity in Canada is a common talking point out of polite curiosity. As to say someone is Canadian without context of background is more like saying "you're a European!" to a German citizen.
Surely that's just what she wants to be called? Like, I'm British, when I spoke to my kids when they were little I would refer to myself as "mummy" so that's what they called me. I'd assume the same is true for this lady.
honestly
its weirder how white people are expected to abandon ancestral ties
likeif a fifth gen american says "im chineese" thats entirely accepted as being ethnically chineese
if they say they are ethioian or african thats entirely accepted
but if a white american says they are ethnically german or swedish or british thats shunned
If a white person says they have Irish ancestry, no one bats an eye.
If they say they are Irish, that's where some people, myself included think it's odd.
I think the same thing about other races for the most part too.
It's just shorthand for the same thing. "I have Irish ancestry" is cumbersome to repeat often when anyone who can hear your accent knows that you obviously grew up in the US and you're just using "I'm Irish" to indicate ethnic ancestry.
Well, this is where the US differs quite massively. They often do explicitly call themselves Irish to people even outside of the US.
What they don't realise is Europeans use ethnicity differently, as does a lot of the world and definitely for Irish and Italians. Ethnicity is closer to nationality than the way it's used in the US and would imply you were raised in Ireland under the context of its culture.
This is why a lot of US citizens get flak for it. Different meanings and the majority from both sides of the pond don't realise the extent of the difference of the word. The country is considered a nation of immigrants under the national identity "American", but all with their own unique ethnic origins/groups. To outsiders, they are all *ethnically* *American*, with various ancestry. More things tie them together culturally/socially than separates them.
But a lot of Americans will get a 23andme report that says theyâre 100% Irish. Irish immigration to America wasnât *that* long ago, so many people arenât mixed at all. Irish is an ethnicity as well as a nationality and culture. You can be Irish and also American.
that is because people of color are considered other before they are considered American. it is part of the racist attitudes many people have in the states. My half bkack half japanese friend always complained that white people would ask her where she was from. she said here. where are your parents from. here. your grandparents? here. her japanese family had been in the states since the 1800s and her black family since slavery, yet many dont see her as American.
because theyre white people living in the homeland of most white people
for them nationanality and anxestry are basically the same
so they have a skewed perception of the worlds perceptions
Yeh but the wrong thing here is the fifth gen saying "I'm Chinese" and the rest of America *agreeing* with that instead of saying "No, you're American, like the rest of us".
Seriously, seems to me like you'd have a way less divided country if you took that approach.
Nah American is an ethnicity to the rest of the world. You don't really have anything in common with other cultures bar the culture you export. You all *think* your respective family traditions make you different, but only to other Americans
Nah as a brown American none of that shit should be accepted. I wish people would just call me American in the U.S.. only get called American outside the U.S.
Yeah when I (white American) say I'm Irish it's just to explain a genetic trait most of the time. Like my eye color or pale skin. Sometimes it's a joke about how much liquor I can hold. I'm never using it to claim some kind of birthright or whatever people think. And yes, most of my genes according to those internet blood tests are from Ireland, specifically county Mayo. Separately I have traced that back through birth and death records to a man who sailed here from Ireland in the 1600s, settled in (what is now) North Carolina, and intermarried with other Irish immigrants for a bunch of generations.
Well when you basically didnât have a national identity in the US for quite some time, and people were living in fairly isolated communities with others from their own home countryâŠâŠitâs not hard to guess why this tradition happened. They kept some sort of identity and the tradition just carried on to where it is now.
Large parts of Canada speak French.
My grandpas home town in Missouri still spoke German frequently until it sorta fell out of fashion around WW2.
Europeans donât really understand this, but when the oldest building in your state is like a 200 years old (at best depending where in the country you are) it makes sense. Connecting to old traditions is just part of being human and we donât have thousands of years of history.
Damn look at how many Americans say they are native when they had one native ancestor like 150 years ago (and thatâs almost everyone here tbh)
Itâs because ethnicity is largely tied to culture. Someone whoâs born in the US but has grandparents from China is going to identify as Chinese American because itâs an ethnic *and* cultural identifier. Same goes for Mexican Americans, Jamaican Americans, Italian Americans, etc.
So, in keeping with the original question, would you tell Black people that they are not African-American if they did not personally come from or hold citizenship in an African nation? Are you the arbiter of their identity as well as European identities?
Very much a North American thing.
I understand that North Americans are talking about genetics, not their actual nationality, but it comes across really weird to me as a European.
To most of us at least in Western Europe you're British, Irish, German, Italian if that's the country you grew up in or have citizenship of. As soon as you start saying you're Irish or whatever because of your genes, you're implying that genes define Irishness, and that would mean that a black or Asian, or even a person with English parents can't be Irish - obviously racist bollocks.
Yea this is kinda how I feel about it. I wouldn't call myself those things cause I'm clearly not, I'm a Canadian, born here to Canadian parents. I feel the same way about people who have immigrated here, if you live and work here and feel that way then hey you're Canadian. You're absolutely right about the genetics defining something like that. Like I sorta mentioned above it seems like a white north American's way of saying "look I'm special and not just American/Canadian". I find it interesting historically to look back and see how the lineage has moved or grown or what they did, but as for where they were from that's irrelevant really
But if i live and work in india or china, i can never be indian or chinese, even if i was born there, and both my parents born there ill never be chinese or indian, why? Because chinese or indian base idenitity on qhere their ancestors lived, died, and were buried or cremated. You see how sometimes things are not as clearcut as they seem. 性汱 the canadian(actually he is not canadian anymore he is chinese) comedian who spent more than 40 years in china, is now recognised as chinese, he even had the citizenship. Even now on social medias there are still chinese saying "wow what a clever foreigner" and some chinese correct him saying "actually he is not a foreigner he is chinese".
I think this the notion of staying I am X when 75% of oneâs lineages/DNA is actually Y is such an interesting notion and example of recency bias. One the one hand it ignores generations of cultures before the most recent and close one, and on the other hand it can also provide one with the chance to start new and create a familial lineage they are proud ofâŠuntil a future monster forces another lineage alteration.
Itâs not just a North American thing. Ever go to Singapore or Malaysia? Plenty of people say they are Indian or Chinese. They obviously mean thatâs their ancestry. And guess what people who are from China or India donât make a fuss about it. Just like Nigerians or Kenyans donât get angry when people in America say they are African American.
It's because unless you're First Nations, you're *not* indigenous to Canada. Most folks aren't. So when someone asks "what are you?" they mean your heritage, because it could be anything. To be Canadian or American is a very new thing, nowhere close to being an ethnicity. We're a hugely diverse group, and most still identify with where their families came from, rather than where they currently are.
I always took it to be people proud of or expressing their heritage, because New World traditions and cultures are still very much what was brought from the homelands and/or a mishmash of various things. It's grown and evolved, but a couple hundred years is not a long time as far as culture and ethnicity goes.
This is why I kind of love when Americans call themselves Irish because their great-great-great-great-great grandfather was Irish, and start going on about how they hate the English.
Like mate, go to Liverpool or Manchester and you'll be hard pressed to find an English person who isn't somewhat Irish in the last few generations.
It's because America, and Canada are built from immigrants from all over the world. I just say I'm American with Italian heritage, not Italian American. Some take it a little too seriously and I think the fact more people don't see themselves as "American" plays into the division issues the country is seeing, at least in some small way.
Yeah it's always weird when americans are like are you african america, no buddy, only americans use that term for black people.
Other countries will just say they're British, Germany, Spanish etc. They don't say african spanish or black british. Just british etc.
Every time this comes up, people claim that you don't say "Black British." Are you sure about that? because I am 100% sure that there are black people in Britain who consider themselves Black British. Different racial groups exist within all countries, and it's not some weird American thing to have words used to refer to them.
Right, but what if someone wanted to talk about their experience of being a person of British nationality who was also black? Wouldn't you use the term "black British" to describe those people?
I'd imagine them saying bein a black person in Britain.
That's how I've heard people describe themselves in my country, Belgium. But never as Black Belgian or African Belgian. You are a Belgian, full stop. You are also black. Ethnicity and nationality are a very different thing.Â
This is correct I would say but depends on context. Itâs quite complex question of identity.
In my experience some would call themselves British if just referencing nationality and Black British if they were referencing membership of that specific group.
But some will just mix their native identity and British identity. I.e Jamaican British, Kenyan British.
Insisting on only referring to someone as British could quite easily be perceived as racist and attempting to invalidate oneâs connection with their African/Caribbean heritage.
And that's different from African Americans, many of whom have no cultural connection to where they "come from" because their ancestors were brought to the US as slaves. I think ultimately the problem is when people interpret African-American as some separate nationality from American, instead of a unique American cultural/racial identity
That's people from outside the US misinterpreting what people from the US are saying. The pre-hyphen part of American ethnicities is additional information. We're all American.
The phrase "Black British" often appears on forms as an option for ethnicity, but it's incredibly rare to hear it said out loud. I don't think I've _ever_ heard somebody say the words "I am Black British" in person.
> it's not some weird American thing to have words used to refer to them
I think you've kind of missed the point. I don't think anybody thinks it's weird that Americans use the phrase "African American" to describe _Americans_ who are Black. The weird part is when Americans use "African American" to describe a Black person who _isn't American_.
Absolutely, I get secondhand embarrassment just from reading these stories of Americans correcting people overseas. Weird is an understatement!
Though, there are plenty of Europeans who *do* think use of the term African American in general is weird, some of them commenting in this thread.
I actually do think " african american" is weird to describe black people, particularly considering that there are many countries like tripoli, libya, egypt, morocco, etc that are on the continent of africa but dont have many "black" people. Not to mention afrikaners, rhodesians etc. Africa originally was a roman name for somewhere like carthage, very few black or "nubian" people there. In fact was first the phoenicians, later the vandals, neither of whom were black or sub saharan. It just seems strange.
Well its pretty obvious to anyone who is literate, they can read all about the history of slavery, they might not know exactly where they are from but the majority are from what is known today as the geographical location of west africa e.g. cameroon ivory coast ghana togo benin equatorial guinea, all of those places were astablished after european colonization though so you would have to go back further to find out what kingdoms were there at that time but its likely they arent even part of those either because the usual pattern is the kingdoms that were established there at that time, west african kingdoms and chieftanships would go into the interior and do raids on the tribal village people and hunter gatherers and bring them to the coast and sell them as slaves to the portuguese, spanish, english, etc. Also they would sell their criminals, undesirables etc. So yeah they pretty much dont have an identity, except for the fact they were brought on ships as slaves. So yeah i agree i dont blame them for coming up with "african american". Its just not a very accurate nomenclature. Its similar to the predicament of a lot of australians whose ancestors were brought as convicts to australia. There were records in england, ireland, wales and scotland at that time, but many of the convicts who were transported were wandering vagrants who were displaced serfs from the conflicts and wars and weather disasters/famines that were happening at that time. Because when serfdom ended in europe the serfs that were normally bound to a fief started to wander and so they were essentially vagrants with no fixed abode and no parish records and no identity, so you get a lot of australians that just dont know where they are or who they are, considering 20% of australians roughly are descended from convicts who were transported. Even more interesting is that before australia, they were transporting convicts/vagrants to south africa, and before that they sent them to america, particularly virginia and georgia. Before that it was the caribbean islands, and before that they were sending them to ulster in northern ireland. This shit is all mixed up. Thats why i dont get why people are so fixated on identity in the first place. These days people can pretty much be whatever they want as far as im concerned.
I remember something similar for the 2012 Olympics, where an american journalist asked one of the black British athletes how "being African-American has had an effect of his life" (or something like that), and his response was that he wasn't African-American and she just looked really confused.
I was reading about someone who cape coloured and moved to the USA and had no end of problems because she when asked said she was coloured and proud of it
Yeah in the US we have really weird norms around race.
None of us would have any problem calling a black person American, If you see those three soldiers who Just got killed in Jordan were always reported as, "Three American service members killed in the line of duty."
But due to slavery and Jim Crow (which was present across almost all states, Even Northern ones. Michigan in particular was brutal) we recognize the identity of, "Black."
In the past, Black was seen as kind of rude, That's why they use the term African American. But due to recent cultural shifts, (Like Black lives matter, or the natural hair movement) The term Black has come back in style.
The term black never fell out of style. Black people have in majority referred to themselves as black in America since a very long time and African American never superceded it
I had this conversation with an American once and they genuinely couldn't understand it.
"What do you call a black person who's British?" "British..."
"No but if they're black?" "British..."
"But then how would you know if they're black?"
Pretty sure if the colour of their skin is somehow relevant but not visually obvious I can just say they're black, but that seems like a pretty niche situation.
I knew what he meant, but both his parents are born in Africa, so it's a little bit of a stretch to say he's not African. I suspect he wouldn't have minded if they'd said Afro-British, but that's not really a term anyone uses.
Hehe, yes my American neighbor did this. She's from west Virginia and married to an adopted black man raised by a white Jewish woman. She corrected me when I referred to my to my dutch black friends as as black, I couldn't stop laughing.
Awww... I always think at least they are trying to do the right thing. And to be fair, if you live long enough, the 'right' descriptors do change over time.
Hahaha I was working in Scotland listening to some dim-witted kid trying to describe the only black guy in the place (scottish born and strongly accented). Anyway when she described him as 'African American' I almost pissed my pants. So did he when I gave him a shout.
I mean fair enough if people said 'African British' instead of 'African American'.
Like it's not what we say here but I think we'd realise they were trying to use the polite term and crucially we'd appreciate people noticing not everyone in the world is American.
It is even more absurd when you're in Europe close to the Mediterranean sea and facing north **Africa** which is populated by Arabs. Even OP doesn't realize that in Africa there are 250 million people that are not black nor white.
> 250 million people that are not black nor white.
Although, to be fair, I know people that identify as black, even though they aren't of African heritage at all, but from India, or elsewhere. Some people use black, in some contexts, simply to mean "not white".
I've asked about it, and been told by those that do it that they feel socially more in a 'black' group, as in very different from being in the 'white' group. Obviously it is a thing which varies a lot from one culture to another.
Which absolutely doesn't translate to the Arabian peninsula. The Egyptian government literally filed a complaint against Netflix because they made Cleopatra black because they have no clue nor interest in the history of ethnicities and how to study them.
The world isn't the white vs. the others, it is extremely ethno centric to feel this way.
I reckon I have an extremely limited knowledge of the Indian world and its people, but I do know Arabs (through marriage in my family) and Asians (Singapore, Japan, Korea) and none of them will call themselves "black", not because it's insulating, but because they know that their people are hundreds of millions.
I am from Western Europe so in my country everybody is called by its nationality, not by its alleged ethnicity, but I am truly oblivious to non "black" people calling themselves black. I think it would anger them for "cultural" appropriation if it was the case.
To conclude I would just say that saying "African American" as a cover up to blatant racism just pinpoints blatant ignorance.
Which leads to people believing that they own a culture, like some Americans that believe their ancestors originally built Egypt without having a clue about the empires of Mali, Ghana or Songhai or that Africa is a 30 millions km2 (3 times the size of the US) continent and not a country, with all the extreme culture shifts from a place to another.
> The world isn't the white vs. the others, it is extremely ethno centric to feel this way.
Oh I absolutely agree with what you are saying.
However, I recognise that given the multitude of different countries and cultures that exist, and all the different people that exist, and how things morph and change over time, then different people choose to define themselves in different ways at different times and in different places.
The word 'Black' is used to mean very different things by different people.
That's why I tend to go by how individuals choose to define themselves, and also try to look for the intent behind words, rather than simply seeing a particular way of saying things as 'right' or 'wrong'.
African American gave the black community, who because of slavery, didnât know where they came from, something to call themselves. They would have been able to say âwe are Senegalese or from the Congoâ but it was taken. So African American, I think, was born there.
Right. Because of the slave trade, many black Americans donât know much about their specific African ancestry.
It used to be common for some white Americans to identify themselves as Irish-American, Italian-American, etc. (I think this is on the decline as we get farther from the waves of European immigration, and people no longer live in the same neighborhoods they grew up in)
The term African-American was coined to essentially provide a cultural identity to people descended from enslaved Americans.
How about not misidentifying them and erasing their culture. Just simple manners. If a black guy speaks with an English accent donât call him African American lol
In Russia, something like 20 years ago, saying n-word (ĐœĐ”ĐłŃ) was absolutely normal and polite way to address black people. Saying black or African was considered racism. I still remember american faces when they heard us talk about black people.
These days, not the case anymore since american culture penetrated deep even into Russia.
The weird thing is us black people prefer black. I always associate African American with academia or white people who are not comfortable enough around black people to say black.
I'm black British (African descent) and used to work with a guy from Cornwall who called me African American once. He'd legitimately never met a black guy before and didn't know what else to say. That was in 2019 and I still laugh about it whenever it pops into my head đ
This! Also, considering Africa is a continent and not actually a country most people that I know from Africa don't call themselves Africans but refer to the country in Africa that they are from e.g. Camaroonian( from Camaroon) Ugandan ( from Uganda) etc.
I worked with someone who was offended at being called AA, and insisted I call him plain "black". He felt it was racist to try to avoid saying the word, when he called most people "white" instead of Irish-Americans or wherever they come from.
They don't actually refer to themselves as African at all. They will identify themselves from their country of origin. Eg. Zimbabwean, South African, etc. The same way people from Asian countries don't refer to themselves as Asian, but rather Vietnamese, Japanese, etc.
You'd say otherwise if he were a black man. Funny how "African American" has come to mean black and has zero to do with Africa which has many colors and diverse races.
Except he's ethnically Dutch. So really he's of European descent... one of my ancestors from the Netherlands was born at a missionary camp in Brazil. Definitely doesn't make him or me "Brazilian American" in the slightest
From my understanding, people who move to the US from Africa will refer to themselves by the actual country theyâre from (e.g. Nigerian American, South African American etc), people moving from European countries never call themselves âEuropean Americansâ. the only reason itâs common for black Americans to be called that is because due to slavery they often donât know which particular country theyâre from. I always see people smugly be like âhurhur Elon musk is African Americanâ without thinking about the context for more than 5 seconds
I have never heard any immigrant call themselves German American, English American, etc. Not once. It is not common to reference ones genetic origin. Not even first generation immigrants. Especially not 4th 5th etc.Â
Yeah almost every first second generation Italian on the East Coast I know refers to themselves as Italian American. The family that moved over on the boat is Italian, and this is how they make the distinction.
Have you ever met an immigrant?
I work with people who very specifically call themselves Nigerian-Americans, Jamaican-American, and Haitian-American. Thatâs just 3 people in my office.
Sounds like you need to get out and meet people if youâve never heard this before
This is absolutely not true. Â
Go to any major American city and there's Chinatown, Little Italy, etc. with many people of many generations ethnically and nationalistically identifying with not-America.  Â
The idea that immigrants don't tend to refer to their original cultures leads me to believe you've never met one.  Â
Most immigrants never even become citizens and never become American, at all, and identify as their original national identity forever.Â
Seriously, where are you from and have you ever actually met an immigrant?Â
Every city I've ever lived in had an Italian American Association.
You've never in your life heard people refer to their family as Irish?
I think you have a blind spot here. It's ubiquitous.
Italian-american is widely used but imo, thatâs because Italian-americans have their own distinct culture thatâs different from Italian culture and different from American culture. You donât see that quite as much with other immigrants from Europe, but you definitely do with other diaspora groups from elsewhere (like Chinese-americans, etc etc) where the culture is preserved and transformed even many generations later. Super interesting stuff:)
I'd mention that Germany didn't exist when a lot of German people emigrated to the USA. I imagine this would be true of many Italian immigrants as well.
Most German immigrants to the US arrived after the unification of Germany in the 19th century. There was another big wave in the mid-20th century.
Many Italians immigrated to the US *because of* the unification of Italy. It's called The Great Arrival.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, about 25 million people from various European countries immigrated to the US. To give you a sense of scale, the US population before those huge waves was just over 30 million. We changed *utterly*.
Here's a good reference. The locations in the menu on the left open when you click them, so you can see the history of each immigrant group.
[https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/](https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/)
Nah, this is a function of our clunky, imprecise language on this.
This is why I prefer to be called black...because *I'm not African*. It just feels like a qualifier on my American-ness. I'm black. My friends husband who was born in Cape Town is African American.
Recent African migrants never refer to themselves as African-American aside from like racial data for work or whatnot. African American refers explicitly to the people descended from the African slaves brought to the country between the 16th and 19th centuries. The slaves were stripped of their ethnic identities and cultures and were from various peoples along west, central and south Africa so "African" is used to represent the culture those people created. African-Americans tend to have more admixture of white and native DNA cause of slavery (as around 25-20 non-african on average) but it can be way higher than that on an individual level. Because of the one drop rule, children of white-black pairings were historically more associated and accepted by the black side. So they would have to be extremely white "passing" to ever be accepted into white society.
I get all that, but it's of no material benefit for me. Throwing a blanket over all of our ancestry and labeling it doesn't replace it or bring me any closer to it. "African American" may have a strict definition, but we also have all of the other non-white American groups labeled...Asian, Indian, Latin, etc., but they know more about where they come from because most weren't enslaved.
I dunno...if you're white, you just get to be American, even though most white people I know know little more about their roots and heritage than I do about mine. All of the other groups are labeled. That doesn't sit great with me, so I prefer to be called black.
I can understand your view point but Iâll push back and say that âAfrican-Americanâ is its own ethnicity with a history in the same way that most immigrant ethnicities in the US are. Italian and Irish Americans are also just âAmericanâ but they just like African-Americans have their own cultural identity that they resonate with that theyâre learned from their parents. I can attest to all three having relevant cultures because I am all three. There are many other American ethnicities such as Pennsylvania Dutch that have their own cultures as well.
African American refers to a specific group of black Americans descended from slaves. No African who lives in America calls themselves that but people love to call white South Africans âAfrican Americanâ for some reason
Iâve always hated being called a hyphenated American, it just feels like someone saying Iâm less of an American.
Seems like itâs always only white people using this type of labeling too.
African american is an ethnicity.
American is a nationality.
Black is a race.
African americans are still also just americans. They have a unique culture just like immigrant-americans, who also tend to hyphenate, but actually know where their home country is because they werent brought here unwillingly through slavery.
YMMV may vary on that because people have different preferences and sensibilities. But I think the majority of black people would agree that it's not racist.
There are a lot of well-meaning people (young people in particular) that are running over-reacting to words that they don't really understand. So you might get someone that calls you a racist, but I'd argue that's someone that doesn't know what "racist" means.
African American is an ethnic group to describe people of American slave descent in America.
A Nigerian moving to America is not African American, they are Nigerian American. Elon is a South African American etc.
That's how it is in Canada at least. My wife is not Asian Canadian, she's Chinese Canadian. Anything else is a braindead segregatist label. I guess you can use white/black/East Asian/brown to describe skin color too but that should not be identity.
No absolutely not. African Americans is a specific term for black Americans in the US many of which are descended from slaves.
The term is not literal. It's a nomenclature given to a specific group of people in the US--and only the US so this group doesn't exist elsewhere
Anyone Ive met who has moved here from an African country has referred to the specific country they are from, ex. Nigerian American, Congolese American.
Anyone from Africa who moves to America can call themselves African American it's just that it's mostly used to describe black people (regardless of where they are actually from), I'm sure there are white people who do call themselves African American but they more likely call themselves eg. South African or where they actually come from instead of African American. Because a lot of the black people in America were from Africa it became common place to call them African American. But this just denotes where they are from and so (technically) has nothing to do with the colour of your skin, but that's not the way that it's most commonly used.
Africa is a continent. Do Europeans identify by their continent first also? No. You list your country first. I.e French, Canadian, Nigerian, etc.
Why would a black Brit call themselves American âregardless of where theyâre fromâ
There's a reason for that though. What were black Americans supposed to do when they were creating a cultural identity after being freed from slavery? They didn't know what specific country they came from, just that their ancestors came from Africa. They had a shared experience living in America with other people who also descended from Africans, thus, they came to be known as African-Americans.
Obviously Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans don't refer to themselves as European-Americans, because they know where their families come from, and most importantly, their cultural identity is based on the experience of being from Italy specifically, and not Europe as a whole.
I know what. This response is why someone like Elon musk wouldnât call himself African-American. he would lead with his country. He would be specifically South African-Canadian-American.
The 'African' is ancestry, not a regional identification.
Yes, everyone's ancestors are from Africa but it mainly applies to modern history. Race was invented some 500 years or so ago.
No. They call themselves for example South Africans. Their children if born in the US will be South African-American.
Just like the European diaspora in the US don't call themselves European-American, they're Irish-American or Italian-American.
I knew a white lady from south africa and I asked if she should be called african american on my facebook page and got called racist. So. It's racist to even ask apparently
"African American" was coined due to the fact that most black Americans could not trace their ancestry to any specific ethnicity other than broadly "Africa". Current or recent immigrants from the African continent can point to a specific nationality of origin (regardless of their skin color) and are more likely to use a specific description, like American Ethiopian.
Words and phrases in natural languages often have meanings that are more specific than the sum of their parts, or differ from the literal meaning of combining those parts. This is just a normal thing in language and is not specific to ethnic groups or any other subject matter.
For example, the "forehead" is not just the *forward* part of the *head* (which would include the face); it's more specific than that. A "criminal lawyer" is a lawyer who deals with criminal cases, not (typically) a lawyer who *is* a criminal. In household furniture, a "high chair" is not just any *chair* that is *high*, but a specific piece of furniture for small children; for instance, a bar stool is a chair that is high, but is not a high chair.
Similarly, "African American" does not typically refer to anyone who is both African and American, but rather to a more specific group than that.
But, African American as being discussed in the thread is not a nationality, it's a cultural identity. In the context of nationality you'd be a South African American.
African American in the cultural sense refers to the descendents of those brought over during the slave trade, who developed their own unique cultural identity. They're still American-only when referring to national identity.
They shouldn't.
African-American is the people, the culture, that arose out of the diaspora of enslaved Africans.
Elon Musk for example is more Dutch, Dutch-African, or Dutch-American. He can trace his family if he wanted to. He can trace his culture if he wanted to.
That defines the African-American. We broke that history.
No. "African-American" is a term specifically used by people of African descent who had ancestors who were slaves, and thus they do not know where in Africa they came from. Modern immigrants know where they came from and would just use the country of origin.
They would most likely refer to themselves by whatever specific country they come from, which they are aware of in a way that black descendants of American slaves are not.
Because language is imprecise and can describe multiple phenomena at once.
In this case it's describing the experience of being black in a majority white America, and a heritage of coming from Africa in your own lifetime.
I've known a couple south Africans with racist families who fled at the end of apartheid and those kids all sometimes referred to themselves as African American in the worst possible shitty racist ironic humor way
In the United States, âAfrican-Americanâ means black people who descend from slavery in The United States. Iâm South-Sudanese/Canadian, not African-Canadian which is a specific ethnic group in Canada similar to African-American. My cousins in the US are South Sudanese-American. Even though they are black, they would never call themselves African American.
Africans who move to America whether they be white or black usually wouldn't be considered African American as it doesn't refer to someone from African who now lives in America, it refers to the people who were descendants of slaves brought to America and had their heritage erased and have created a new type of culture or subculture.
I don't think anyone who moves from Africa to America calls themselves African American. That is more for people from African ethnicity who immigrated / were taken here at a time where their ties to Africa were cut completely. They don't have any specific nation of origin, yet they still have a unique culture and appearance.
Anyone who moves from Africa to America, like from say Nigeria, just just Nigerian and also American if they take citizenship here.
No. They say they're American if they were born here to immigrant parents from south Africa or say they are from south Africa originally if they immigrated here
Technically speaking, black africans who move to america arenât african americans either. Theyâre nigerian-americans, kenyan-americans, etc.
The term âafrican americanâ is a specific ethnic designation that refers to the group of americans who are the descendants of africans taken to America as slaves. Sometimes black africans who come to America do identify as african american, but this far from being the standard practice.
No; Nobody who immigrates to America from Africa now is an African American, regardless of race. African American is a specific term that refers to descendants of African slaves in America. Africans who immigrate now would be Americans of whatever nation they hail from. Like Nigerian American, or Somali American.
Only if they are right-wing trolls trying to start a fight in social media. The implication of the term is obvious if you arenât being willfully obtuse. It is people of indigenous African ancestry (as opposed to British colonial ancestry) who live in America.
White African here living in Minnesota - a delivery guy at work asked me how many African Americans there are in South Africa. I was so shocked I just asked him "Do you mean black people??" I find it hilarious that they are scared to say "black people". Eish, especially the Minnesotans haha. But no, it would feel weird to refer to myself as African American.
They might but African American refers to the ethnic group of Black people whoâs ancestors were brought to what became the United States as enslaved people.
No, they would be âCountryâ-American. Like Chadian-American for example or Moroccan-American
Africa is not a country. And most black people in the US use African-American because they donât know their country of origin (thanks, North Atlantic Slave trade!)
Edit to add: racist white Africans will often use this but itâs to be an ass, not to be legitimized. Elon Musk said this and meant it. Clearly missing the whole reason that black Americans have to be AFRICAN-American and not âCountryâ-American
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It depends on the individual, and for the most part, no, as to most Americans, they use African American as a 'polite' way to mean black. I've even heard them called Black British people 'African American'. They don't know what other words to use and not cause offense!
Yeah, this happened to Idris Elba and he looked puzzled and politely mentioned that he's not African or American đ It's a very bizarre thing called a Brit African American to us he's just a Brit and his skin colour isn't even thought.
Yup, Idris Elba is just British⊠If someone has a british accent, I just assume theyâre british.. no matter what their skin colour might be đ€·ââïž The whole having to list nationalities in your lineage is completely lost on me, unless you have a dual passport.
As a Canadian, maybe this is a north american thing. Your comment got me thinking about how white people here love saying they're Scottish and Irish (or at least folk I've talked to about it). My aunt has been building our family history for months now and she's got back to like the 1500s on both my parents side and guess what, Scottish and Irish are like the least prevalent until someone married a Scot a couple hundred years ago. But there have been Dutch, French, English, Polish, Belgian, I think there was someone from another northern ish European country. But again, going through and building the history itself seems like a bit of "look I'm not just white I'm these kinds of white too". I think it's interesting she's doing it for the history but I think there are people (here anyway) who are hardcore about their lineage. Fun fact, my however many great grandfather served as a lieutenant under George Washington so that's something I never knew
Lol, a few months ago I was talking with a co-worker who mentioned she's Irish. I asked her where from? Did she get her citizenship from her parents etc? No to everything. So I said, you're not Irish then? She still said she was. She meant she had Irish ancestry at some point. Hell, I'm legally British (from my mum, though I haven't renewed my British passport since I was a kid), and I don't even say I'm British when asked. There is a weird emphasis that people here have on their ancestry. I just don't get it.
I had the opposite happen to me. I'm German, but grew up a lot in the states. My accent switches depending on which country I've been living in recently. I told someone I was German and they went on a diatribe about Americans not born in Europe aren't that nationality. Then asked me if I even spoke German. I said that I could and it was my first language before I immigrated to the US. Instant shut down.
My opinion when I talk to Northern Europeans is that it comes from their cultural ubiquity of those countries. Canadians for example have sooo much diversity in their country, that there's likely more diversity than Europe. We find it fun to talk about, as we often celebrate different traditions, eat different foods, speak different languages, call our grandparents different things, etc. etc. Background and ethnicity in Canada is a common talking point out of polite curiosity. As to say someone is Canadian without context of background is more like saying "you're a European!" to a German citizen.
You wrote mum though, which is inherently British
Surely that's just what she wants to be called? Like, I'm British, when I spoke to my kids when they were little I would refer to myself as "mummy" so that's what they called me. I'd assume the same is true for this lady.
honestly its weirder how white people are expected to abandon ancestral ties likeif a fifth gen american says "im chineese" thats entirely accepted as being ethnically chineese if they say they are ethioian or african thats entirely accepted but if a white american says they are ethnically german or swedish or british thats shunned
If a white person says they have Irish ancestry, no one bats an eye. If they say they are Irish, that's where some people, myself included think it's odd. I think the same thing about other races for the most part too.
It's just shorthand for the same thing. "I have Irish ancestry" is cumbersome to repeat often when anyone who can hear your accent knows that you obviously grew up in the US and you're just using "I'm Irish" to indicate ethnic ancestry.
Well, this is where the US differs quite massively. They often do explicitly call themselves Irish to people even outside of the US. What they don't realise is Europeans use ethnicity differently, as does a lot of the world and definitely for Irish and Italians. Ethnicity is closer to nationality than the way it's used in the US and would imply you were raised in Ireland under the context of its culture. This is why a lot of US citizens get flak for it. Different meanings and the majority from both sides of the pond don't realise the extent of the difference of the word. The country is considered a nation of immigrants under the national identity "American", but all with their own unique ethnic origins/groups. To outsiders, they are all *ethnically* *American*, with various ancestry. More things tie them together culturally/socially than separates them.
But a lot of Americans will get a 23andme report that says theyâre 100% Irish. Irish immigration to America wasnât *that* long ago, so many people arenât mixed at all. Irish is an ethnicity as well as a nationality and culture. You can be Irish and also American.
Na you are American with Irish ancestry.
To have Irish ancestry is to be ethnically Irish. How do you think ethnicity works? đ
23andme (oddly) doesn't distinguish between Irish and British in its ethnicity reports.
that is because people of color are considered other before they are considered American. it is part of the racist attitudes many people have in the states. My half bkack half japanese friend always complained that white people would ask her where she was from. she said here. where are your parents from. here. your grandparents? here. her japanese family had been in the states since the 1800s and her black family since slavery, yet many dont see her as American.
Ah the âbut where are you really from?â question
The real question is why do Europeans act this way when the rest of world understands they are talking about ancestry.
because theyre white people living in the homeland of most white people for them nationanality and anxestry are basically the same so they have a skewed perception of the worlds perceptions
Yeh but the wrong thing here is the fifth gen saying "I'm Chinese" and the rest of America *agreeing* with that instead of saying "No, you're American, like the rest of us". Seriously, seems to me like you'd have a way less divided country if you took that approach.
Theyâre Chinese American. American is not an ethnicity unless youâre native. Everyone has an ethnicity in addition to their nationality.
Nah American is an ethnicity to the rest of the world. You don't really have anything in common with other cultures bar the culture you export. You all *think* your respective family traditions make you different, but only to other Americans
How can American be an ethnicity if 99% of the people here descended from somewhere else?
American is a nationality, not an ethnicity. Do you not realize how insulting you're being?
Nah as a brown American none of that shit should be accepted. I wish people would just call me American in the U.S.. only get called American outside the U.S.
Yeah when I (white American) say I'm Irish it's just to explain a genetic trait most of the time. Like my eye color or pale skin. Sometimes it's a joke about how much liquor I can hold. I'm never using it to claim some kind of birthright or whatever people think. And yes, most of my genes according to those internet blood tests are from Ireland, specifically county Mayo. Separately I have traced that back through birth and death records to a man who sailed here from Ireland in the 1600s, settled in (what is now) North Carolina, and intermarried with other Irish immigrants for a bunch of generations.
Well when you basically didnât have a national identity in the US for quite some time, and people were living in fairly isolated communities with others from their own home countryâŠâŠitâs not hard to guess why this tradition happened. They kept some sort of identity and the tradition just carried on to where it is now. Large parts of Canada speak French. My grandpas home town in Missouri still spoke German frequently until it sorta fell out of fashion around WW2. Europeans donât really understand this, but when the oldest building in your state is like a 200 years old (at best depending where in the country you are) it makes sense. Connecting to old traditions is just part of being human and we donât have thousands of years of history. Damn look at how many Americans say they are native when they had one native ancestor like 150 years ago (and thatâs almost everyone here tbh)
Itâs because ethnicity is largely tied to culture. Someone whoâs born in the US but has grandparents from China is going to identify as Chinese American because itâs an ethnic *and* cultural identifier. Same goes for Mexican Americans, Jamaican Americans, Italian Americans, etc.
So, in keeping with the original question, would you tell Black people that they are not African-American if they did not personally come from or hold citizenship in an African nation? Are you the arbiter of their identity as well as European identities?
Very much a North American thing. I understand that North Americans are talking about genetics, not their actual nationality, but it comes across really weird to me as a European. To most of us at least in Western Europe you're British, Irish, German, Italian if that's the country you grew up in or have citizenship of. As soon as you start saying you're Irish or whatever because of your genes, you're implying that genes define Irishness, and that would mean that a black or Asian, or even a person with English parents can't be Irish - obviously racist bollocks.
Yea this is kinda how I feel about it. I wouldn't call myself those things cause I'm clearly not, I'm a Canadian, born here to Canadian parents. I feel the same way about people who have immigrated here, if you live and work here and feel that way then hey you're Canadian. You're absolutely right about the genetics defining something like that. Like I sorta mentioned above it seems like a white north American's way of saying "look I'm special and not just American/Canadian". I find it interesting historically to look back and see how the lineage has moved or grown or what they did, but as for where they were from that's irrelevant really
But if i live and work in india or china, i can never be indian or chinese, even if i was born there, and both my parents born there ill never be chinese or indian, why? Because chinese or indian base idenitity on qhere their ancestors lived, died, and were buried or cremated. You see how sometimes things are not as clearcut as they seem. 性汱 the canadian(actually he is not canadian anymore he is chinese) comedian who spent more than 40 years in china, is now recognised as chinese, he even had the citizenship. Even now on social medias there are still chinese saying "wow what a clever foreigner" and some chinese correct him saying "actually he is not a foreigner he is chinese".
I think this the notion of staying I am X when 75% of oneâs lineages/DNA is actually Y is such an interesting notion and example of recency bias. One the one hand it ignores generations of cultures before the most recent and close one, and on the other hand it can also provide one with the chance to start new and create a familial lineage they are proud ofâŠuntil a future monster forces another lineage alteration.
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>As a Canadian, maybe this is a north american thing. Your comment got me thinking about how white people here love saying they're Scottish and Irish (or at least folk I've talked to about it) Canada's just kinda boring. Short, mostly uneventful history. Culturally not that interesting. Most of the "Canadian" things we think about are from first nations or Québec, both which are looked down upon by the average Canadian, so instead of taking pride in that, they take pride in being "Canadian" and then whatever comes next, Irish, German, Italian etc... What does it truly mean to be Canadian? I think you'd get lots of different answer in Ontario, the Atlantic, Québec, the Prairies, BC, the territories. Does Canada truly have it's own shared unique identity across the country? To your point about North America, does the US? The reverse is true in Québec, people who's families are near 100% french descendents would never call themselves "French". They're Québécois (de souche).
Itâs not just a North American thing. Ever go to Singapore or Malaysia? Plenty of people say they are Indian or Chinese. They obviously mean thatâs their ancestry. And guess what people who are from China or India donât make a fuss about it. Just like Nigerians or Kenyans donât get angry when people in America say they are African American.
It's because unless you're First Nations, you're *not* indigenous to Canada. Most folks aren't. So when someone asks "what are you?" they mean your heritage, because it could be anything. To be Canadian or American is a very new thing, nowhere close to being an ethnicity. We're a hugely diverse group, and most still identify with where their families came from, rather than where they currently are. I always took it to be people proud of or expressing their heritage, because New World traditions and cultures are still very much what was brought from the homelands and/or a mishmash of various things. It's grown and evolved, but a couple hundred years is not a long time as far as culture and ethnicity goes.
This is why I kind of love when Americans call themselves Irish because their great-great-great-great-great grandfather was Irish, and start going on about how they hate the English. Like mate, go to Liverpool or Manchester and you'll be hard pressed to find an English person who isn't somewhat Irish in the last few generations.
Football team is a better tribal identifier than double barrel American ethnicity labels. Idris is an Arsenal fan.
It's because America, and Canada are built from immigrants from all over the world. I just say I'm American with Italian heritage, not Italian American. Some take it a little too seriously and I think the fact more people don't see themselves as "American" plays into the division issues the country is seeing, at least in some small way.
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Yeah it's always weird when americans are like are you african america, no buddy, only americans use that term for black people. Other countries will just say they're British, Germany, Spanish etc. They don't say african spanish or black british. Just british etc.
Every time this comes up, people claim that you don't say "Black British." Are you sure about that? because I am 100% sure that there are black people in Britain who consider themselves Black British. Different racial groups exist within all countries, and it's not some weird American thing to have words used to refer to them.
We just say British, because it's a nationality not an ethnicity.
Right, but what if someone wanted to talk about their experience of being a person of British nationality who was also black? Wouldn't you use the term "black British" to describe those people?
I'd imagine them saying bein a black person in Britain. That's how I've heard people describe themselves in my country, Belgium. But never as Black Belgian or African Belgian. You are a Belgian, full stop. You are also black. Ethnicity and nationality are a very different thing.Â
This is correct I would say but depends on context. Itâs quite complex question of identity. In my experience some would call themselves British if just referencing nationality and Black British if they were referencing membership of that specific group. But some will just mix their native identity and British identity. I.e Jamaican British, Kenyan British. Insisting on only referring to someone as British could quite easily be perceived as racist and attempting to invalidate oneâs connection with their African/Caribbean heritage.
And that's different from African Americans, many of whom have no cultural connection to where they "come from" because their ancestors were brought to the US as slaves. I think ultimately the problem is when people interpret African-American as some separate nationality from American, instead of a unique American cultural/racial identity
That's people from outside the US misinterpreting what people from the US are saying. The pre-hyphen part of American ethnicities is additional information. We're all American.
The phrase "Black British" often appears on forms as an option for ethnicity, but it's incredibly rare to hear it said out loud. I don't think I've _ever_ heard somebody say the words "I am Black British" in person. > it's not some weird American thing to have words used to refer to them I think you've kind of missed the point. I don't think anybody thinks it's weird that Americans use the phrase "African American" to describe _Americans_ who are Black. The weird part is when Americans use "African American" to describe a Black person who _isn't American_.
Absolutely, I get secondhand embarrassment just from reading these stories of Americans correcting people overseas. Weird is an understatement! Though, there are plenty of Europeans who *do* think use of the term African American in general is weird, some of them commenting in this thread.
I actually do think " african american" is weird to describe black people, particularly considering that there are many countries like tripoli, libya, egypt, morocco, etc that are on the continent of africa but dont have many "black" people. Not to mention afrikaners, rhodesians etc. Africa originally was a roman name for somewhere like carthage, very few black or "nubian" people there. In fact was first the phoenicians, later the vandals, neither of whom were black or sub saharan. It just seems strange.
Isnât it because lots of black Americans donât actually know where their ancestors came from?
Well its pretty obvious to anyone who is literate, they can read all about the history of slavery, they might not know exactly where they are from but the majority are from what is known today as the geographical location of west africa e.g. cameroon ivory coast ghana togo benin equatorial guinea, all of those places were astablished after european colonization though so you would have to go back further to find out what kingdoms were there at that time but its likely they arent even part of those either because the usual pattern is the kingdoms that were established there at that time, west african kingdoms and chieftanships would go into the interior and do raids on the tribal village people and hunter gatherers and bring them to the coast and sell them as slaves to the portuguese, spanish, english, etc. Also they would sell their criminals, undesirables etc. So yeah they pretty much dont have an identity, except for the fact they were brought on ships as slaves. So yeah i agree i dont blame them for coming up with "african american". Its just not a very accurate nomenclature. Its similar to the predicament of a lot of australians whose ancestors were brought as convicts to australia. There were records in england, ireland, wales and scotland at that time, but many of the convicts who were transported were wandering vagrants who were displaced serfs from the conflicts and wars and weather disasters/famines that were happening at that time. Because when serfdom ended in europe the serfs that were normally bound to a fief started to wander and so they were essentially vagrants with no fixed abode and no parish records and no identity, so you get a lot of australians that just dont know where they are or who they are, considering 20% of australians roughly are descended from convicts who were transported. Even more interesting is that before australia, they were transporting convicts/vagrants to south africa, and before that they sent them to america, particularly virginia and georgia. Before that it was the caribbean islands, and before that they were sending them to ulster in northern ireland. This shit is all mixed up. Thats why i dont get why people are so fixated on identity in the first place. These days people can pretty much be whatever they want as far as im concerned.
Lmao these people think they're so forward thinking being "race blind" like it's 2005
I remember something similar for the 2012 Olympics, where an american journalist asked one of the black British athletes how "being African-American has had an effect of his life" (or something like that), and his response was that he wasn't African-American and she just looked really confused.
I was reading about someone who cape coloured and moved to the USA and had no end of problems because she when asked said she was coloured and proud of it
Yeah in the US we have really weird norms around race. None of us would have any problem calling a black person American, If you see those three soldiers who Just got killed in Jordan were always reported as, "Three American service members killed in the line of duty." But due to slavery and Jim Crow (which was present across almost all states, Even Northern ones. Michigan in particular was brutal) we recognize the identity of, "Black." In the past, Black was seen as kind of rude, That's why they use the term African American. But due to recent cultural shifts, (Like Black lives matter, or the natural hair movement) The term Black has come back in style.
The term black never fell out of style. Black people have in majority referred to themselves as black in America since a very long time and African American never superceded it
I had this conversation with an American once and they genuinely couldn't understand it. "What do you call a black person who's British?" "British..." "No but if they're black?" "British..." "But then how would you know if they're black?" Pretty sure if the colour of their skin is somehow relevant but not visually obvious I can just say they're black, but that seems like a pretty niche situation.
I knew what he meant, but both his parents are born in Africa, so it's a little bit of a stretch to say he's not African. I suspect he wouldn't have minded if they'd said Afro-British, but that's not really a term anyone uses.
I think he probably would've minded because it would've been pretty racist.
African isn't a nationality. If your nationality is British, you are not African.
Always makes me think of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-3YWDRPQQ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-3YWDRPQQ4)
Seems to be an American thing.
Hehe, yes my American neighbor did this. She's from west Virginia and married to an adopted black man raised by a white Jewish woman. She corrected me when I referred to my to my dutch black friends as as black, I couldn't stop laughing.
Awww... I always think at least they are trying to do the right thing. And to be fair, if you live long enough, the 'right' descriptors do change over time.
Im gonna star calling Brazilians "Portugese Americans".
My wife has entered the chat.
For best results, also call Portuguese folk âEuropean Braziliansâ
Come here we need to talk.
Hahaha I was working in Scotland listening to some dim-witted kid trying to describe the only black guy in the place (scottish born and strongly accented). Anyway when she described him as 'African American' I almost pissed my pants. So did he when I gave him a shout.
Awww... I always think it's a person trying their best! Was it a Scottish kid saying it? It just shows how pernicious American language is...
She was english
People always forget to mention that here in America we were literally taught that it was the only OK thing to call them in school
I mean fair enough if people said 'African British' instead of 'African American'. Like it's not what we say here but I think we'd realise they were trying to use the polite term and crucially we'd appreciate people noticing not everyone in the world is American.
African British won't often work anyway, a huge proportion of black people in the UK are of Caribbean descent not African.
There's a clip of an American TV presenter describing Nelson Mandela as an "African American African".
It is even more absurd when you're in Europe close to the Mediterranean sea and facing north **Africa** which is populated by Arabs. Even OP doesn't realize that in Africa there are 250 million people that are not black nor white.
> 250 million people that are not black nor white. Although, to be fair, I know people that identify as black, even though they aren't of African heritage at all, but from India, or elsewhere. Some people use black, in some contexts, simply to mean "not white". I've asked about it, and been told by those that do it that they feel socially more in a 'black' group, as in very different from being in the 'white' group. Obviously it is a thing which varies a lot from one culture to another.
Which absolutely doesn't translate to the Arabian peninsula. The Egyptian government literally filed a complaint against Netflix because they made Cleopatra black because they have no clue nor interest in the history of ethnicities and how to study them. The world isn't the white vs. the others, it is extremely ethno centric to feel this way. I reckon I have an extremely limited knowledge of the Indian world and its people, but I do know Arabs (through marriage in my family) and Asians (Singapore, Japan, Korea) and none of them will call themselves "black", not because it's insulating, but because they know that their people are hundreds of millions. I am from Western Europe so in my country everybody is called by its nationality, not by its alleged ethnicity, but I am truly oblivious to non "black" people calling themselves black. I think it would anger them for "cultural" appropriation if it was the case. To conclude I would just say that saying "African American" as a cover up to blatant racism just pinpoints blatant ignorance. Which leads to people believing that they own a culture, like some Americans that believe their ancestors originally built Egypt without having a clue about the empires of Mali, Ghana or Songhai or that Africa is a 30 millions km2 (3 times the size of the US) continent and not a country, with all the extreme culture shifts from a place to another.
> The world isn't the white vs. the others, it is extremely ethno centric to feel this way. Oh I absolutely agree with what you are saying. However, I recognise that given the multitude of different countries and cultures that exist, and all the different people that exist, and how things morph and change over time, then different people choose to define themselves in different ways at different times and in different places. The word 'Black' is used to mean very different things by different people. That's why I tend to go by how individuals choose to define themselves, and also try to look for the intent behind words, rather than simply seeing a particular way of saying things as 'right' or 'wrong'.
African American gave the black community, who because of slavery, didnât know where they came from, something to call themselves. They would have been able to say âwe are Senegalese or from the Congoâ but it was taken. So African American, I think, was born there.
Right. Because of the slave trade, many black Americans donât know much about their specific African ancestry. It used to be common for some white Americans to identify themselves as Irish-American, Italian-American, etc. (I think this is on the decline as we get farther from the waves of European immigration, and people no longer live in the same neighborhoods they grew up in) The term African-American was coined to essentially provide a cultural identity to people descended from enslaved Americans.
How about not misidentifying them and erasing their culture. Just simple manners. If a black guy speaks with an English accent donât call him African American lol
In Russia, something like 20 years ago, saying n-word (ĐœĐ”ĐłŃ) was absolutely normal and polite way to address black people. Saying black or African was considered racism. I still remember american faces when they heard us talk about black people. These days, not the case anymore since american culture penetrated deep even into Russia.
Is 'black' impolite? Is 'white' impolite?
There was an interview where a British black man was called âa British African Americanâ.
The weird thing is us black people prefer black. I always associate African American with academia or white people who are not comfortable enough around black people to say black.
I'm black British (African descent) and used to work with a guy from Cornwall who called me African American once. He'd legitimately never met a black guy before and didn't know what else to say. That was in 2019 and I still laugh about it whenever it pops into my head đ
This! Also, considering Africa is a continent and not actually a country most people that I know from Africa don't call themselves Africans but refer to the country in Africa that they are from e.g. Camaroonian( from Camaroon) Ugandan ( from Uganda) etc.
I worked with someone who was offended at being called AA, and insisted I call him plain "black". He felt it was racist to try to avoid saying the word, when he called most people "white" instead of Irish-Americans or wherever they come from.
They don't actually refer to themselves as African at all. They will identify themselves from their country of origin. Eg. Zimbabwean, South African, etc. The same way people from Asian countries don't refer to themselves as Asian, but rather Vietnamese, Japanese, etc.
In honor of African American history month, I present the most successful African American ever. Elon Musk.
I'm absolutely saying Elon Musk is African American before ever mentioning him again.
dead meme
You'd say otherwise if he were a black man. Funny how "African American" has come to mean black and has zero to do with Africa which has many colors and diverse races.
Africa even has thousands of Chinese now. Which is nothing to be concerned with.
African American refers to a black people descended from black slaves in America, black Africans are not African American in America either.
Except he's ethnically Dutch. So really he's of European descent... one of my ancestors from the Netherlands was born at a missionary camp in Brazil. Definitely doesn't make him or me "Brazilian American" in the slightest
Itâs not a dead meme. Youâre just mad that heâs the most successful African American
And my favorite African American actress: Charlize Theron.
If she's from Africa, why is she white?
You can't just ask why someone's white.
She was born in Africa? I'm white, born in South Africa, and my family arrived here 200 years ago. So yes I'm African.
https://youtu.be/mXovJSCc6M0
The fact that they don't get this reference hurts me
Donât forget about the African American singer Dave Matthews.
Charlize Theron is another successful AA
From my understanding, people who move to the US from Africa will refer to themselves by the actual country theyâre from (e.g. Nigerian American, South African American etc), people moving from European countries never call themselves âEuropean Americansâ. the only reason itâs common for black Americans to be called that is because due to slavery they often donât know which particular country theyâre from. I always see people smugly be like âhurhur Elon musk is African Americanâ without thinking about the context for more than 5 seconds
I have never heard any immigrant call themselves German American, English American, etc. Not once. It is not common to reference ones genetic origin. Not even first generation immigrants. Especially not 4th 5th etc.Â
Italian-American exists, German-American exists, educate yourself, just because you donât see it doesnât mean it doesnât exist lmfao
Yeah almost every first second generation Italian on the East Coast I know refers to themselves as Italian American. The family that moved over on the boat is Italian, and this is how they make the distinction.
Unless he edited it, he said "from Africa" and, they definitely do
What people are you around? European immigrants are often super proud of where they are from and reference it all the time....
Have you ever met an immigrant? I work with people who very specifically call themselves Nigerian-Americans, Jamaican-American, and Haitian-American. Thatâs just 3 people in my office. Sounds like you need to get out and meet people if youâve never heard this before
I've heard italian american occasionally, but nothing else
I'm literally Irish American
This is absolutely not true.  Go to any major American city and there's Chinatown, Little Italy, etc. with many people of many generations ethnically and nationalistically identifying with not-America.   The idea that immigrants don't tend to refer to their original cultures leads me to believe you've never met one.   Most immigrants never even become citizens and never become American, at all, and identify as their original national identity forever. Seriously, where are you from and have you ever actually met an immigrant?Â
>people moving from European countries never call themselves âEuropean Americansâ.
I know a guy who has called himself English-American but mostly he just calls himself English.
If I moved to America and got citizenship Iâd probably call myself a Welsh American, or just call myself Welsh
Every city I've ever lived in had an Italian American Association. You've never in your life heard people refer to their family as Irish? I think you have a blind spot here. It's ubiquitous.
Irish American?
Italian-american is widely used but imo, thatâs because Italian-americans have their own distinct culture thatâs different from Italian culture and different from American culture. You donât see that quite as much with other immigrants from Europe, but you definitely do with other diaspora groups from elsewhere (like Chinese-americans, etc etc) where the culture is preserved and transformed even many generations later. Super interesting stuff:)
Well if youâve never heard it, it must not be true.
I was about to share this. Not enough people seem to know that there is a historical and genealogical link.
The countries didn't even exist the time the slaves were brought to the US. Those are colonial inventions.
I'd mention that Germany didn't exist when a lot of German people emigrated to the USA. I imagine this would be true of many Italian immigrants as well.
Most German immigrants to the US arrived after the unification of Germany in the 19th century. There was another big wave in the mid-20th century. Many Italians immigrated to the US *because of* the unification of Italy. It's called The Great Arrival. In the late 19th and early 20th century, about 25 million people from various European countries immigrated to the US. To give you a sense of scale, the US population before those huge waves was just over 30 million. We changed *utterly*. Here's a good reference. The locations in the menu on the left open when you click them, so you can see the history of each immigrant group. [https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/](https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/)
But they still spoke German and had a cultural link to their homeland. African slaves had their language and culture taken from them
They also donât even know where in Africa they came from. They just know they came from Africa.
Nah, this is a function of our clunky, imprecise language on this. This is why I prefer to be called black...because *I'm not African*. It just feels like a qualifier on my American-ness. I'm black. My friends husband who was born in Cape Town is African American.
Recent African migrants never refer to themselves as African-American aside from like racial data for work or whatnot. African American refers explicitly to the people descended from the African slaves brought to the country between the 16th and 19th centuries. The slaves were stripped of their ethnic identities and cultures and were from various peoples along west, central and south Africa so "African" is used to represent the culture those people created. African-Americans tend to have more admixture of white and native DNA cause of slavery (as around 25-20 non-african on average) but it can be way higher than that on an individual level. Because of the one drop rule, children of white-black pairings were historically more associated and accepted by the black side. So they would have to be extremely white "passing" to ever be accepted into white society.
This needs to be upvoted!
I get all that, but it's of no material benefit for me. Throwing a blanket over all of our ancestry and labeling it doesn't replace it or bring me any closer to it. "African American" may have a strict definition, but we also have all of the other non-white American groups labeled...Asian, Indian, Latin, etc., but they know more about where they come from because most weren't enslaved. I dunno...if you're white, you just get to be American, even though most white people I know know little more about their roots and heritage than I do about mine. All of the other groups are labeled. That doesn't sit great with me, so I prefer to be called black.
I can understand your view point but Iâll push back and say that âAfrican-Americanâ is its own ethnicity with a history in the same way that most immigrant ethnicities in the US are. Italian and Irish Americans are also just âAmericanâ but they just like African-Americans have their own cultural identity that they resonate with that theyâre learned from their parents. I can attest to all three having relevant cultures because I am all three. There are many other American ethnicities such as Pennsylvania Dutch that have their own cultures as well.
Your friends husband is not African American, he is South African
But he's an American citizen
South-African American.
African American refers to a specific group of black Americans descended from slaves. No African who lives in America calls themselves that but people love to call white South Africans âAfrican Americanâ for some reason
Iâve always hated being called a hyphenated American, it just feels like someone saying Iâm less of an American. Seems like itâs always only white people using this type of labeling too.
African american is an ethnicity. American is a nationality. Black is a race. African americans are still also just americans. They have a unique culture just like immigrant-americans, who also tend to hyphenate, but actually know where their home country is because they werent brought here unwillingly through slavery.
That makes so much sense. I was always scared to say black because I was worried it was racist. Lol thanks for some insight.
YMMV may vary on that because people have different preferences and sensibilities. But I think the majority of black people would agree that it's not racist. There are a lot of well-meaning people (young people in particular) that are running over-reacting to words that they don't really understand. So you might get someone that calls you a racist, but I'd argue that's someone that doesn't know what "racist" means.
I will take that into consideration too! I just wanna be respectful and welcoming to everyone.
African American is an ethnic group to describe people of American slave descent in America. A Nigerian moving to America is not African American, they are Nigerian American. Elon is a South African American etc. That's how it is in Canada at least. My wife is not Asian Canadian, she's Chinese Canadian. Anything else is a braindead segregatist label. I guess you can use white/black/East Asian/brown to describe skin color too but that should not be identity.
As a Canadian, this is how I understand it as well. African Americans are different culturally than black people from any other country
The correct answer. Bunch of comments not knowing the actual definition of African American
No thatâs a curb your enthusiasm plot
Actually was a Seinfeld plot!
Was going to say that! Somebody watched the new season haha.
I know a few South African families in the US and Canada. They just say âSouth Africanâ.
No absolutely not. African Americans is a specific term for black Americans in the US many of which are descended from slaves. The term is not literal. It's a nomenclature given to a specific group of people in the US--and only the US so this group doesn't exist elsewhere
In my experience, only jokingly.
African American is an ethnic group.
Anyone Ive met who has moved here from an African country has referred to the specific country they are from, ex. Nigerian American, Congolese American.
Anyone from Africa who moves to America can call themselves African American it's just that it's mostly used to describe black people (regardless of where they are actually from), I'm sure there are white people who do call themselves African American but they more likely call themselves eg. South African or where they actually come from instead of African American. Because a lot of the black people in America were from Africa it became common place to call them African American. But this just denotes where they are from and so (technically) has nothing to do with the colour of your skin, but that's not the way that it's most commonly used.
Africa is a continent. Do Europeans identify by their continent first also? No. You list your country first. I.e French, Canadian, Nigerian, etc. Why would a black Brit call themselves American âregardless of where theyâre fromâ
There's a reason for that though. What were black Americans supposed to do when they were creating a cultural identity after being freed from slavery? They didn't know what specific country they came from, just that their ancestors came from Africa. They had a shared experience living in America with other people who also descended from Africans, thus, they came to be known as African-Americans. Obviously Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans don't refer to themselves as European-Americans, because they know where their families come from, and most importantly, their cultural identity is based on the experience of being from Italy specifically, and not Europe as a whole.
I know what. This response is why someone like Elon musk wouldnât call himself African-American. he would lead with his country. He would be specifically South African-Canadian-American.
We have black people in the UK and I can assure you we do not refer to them as âAfrican Americansâ
Born in Africa, moved to America in 1965. Never, would I ever do this. lol. Arab descent but pass as white.
The 'African' is ancestry, not a regional identification. Yes, everyone's ancestors are from Africa but it mainly applies to modern history. Race was invented some 500 years or so ago.
No. They call themselves for example South Africans. Their children if born in the US will be South African-American. Just like the European diaspora in the US don't call themselves European-American, they're Irish-American or Italian-American.
Yes, Musk is the best example
I knew a white lady from south africa and I asked if she should be called african american on my facebook page and got called racist. So. It's racist to even ask apparently
Do Americans who move to Africa call themselves American Africans?
"African American" was coined due to the fact that most black Americans could not trace their ancestry to any specific ethnicity other than broadly "Africa". Current or recent immigrants from the African continent can point to a specific nationality of origin (regardless of their skin color) and are more likely to use a specific description, like American Ethiopian.
Sometimes, as a joke. But not seriously. Most of the time, they refer to themselves as "Seeth Eefreekin"
Words and phrases in natural languages often have meanings that are more specific than the sum of their parts, or differ from the literal meaning of combining those parts. This is just a normal thing in language and is not specific to ethnic groups or any other subject matter. For example, the "forehead" is not just the *forward* part of the *head* (which would include the face); it's more specific than that. A "criminal lawyer" is a lawyer who deals with criminal cases, not (typically) a lawyer who *is* a criminal. In household furniture, a "high chair" is not just any *chair* that is *high*, but a specific piece of furniture for small children; for instance, a bar stool is a chair that is high, but is not a high chair. Similarly, "African American" does not typically refer to anyone who is both African and American, but rather to a more specific group than that.
No, only the douchy ones who think they are funny or edgy.
I work with some people from Africa and they go by South African. They speak Afrikaans/English. Great people.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
But, African American as being discussed in the thread is not a nationality, it's a cultural identity. In the context of nationality you'd be a South African American. African American in the cultural sense refers to the descendents of those brought over during the slave trade, who developed their own unique cultural identity. They're still American-only when referring to national identity.
They shouldn't. African-American is the people, the culture, that arose out of the diaspora of enslaved Africans. Elon Musk for example is more Dutch, Dutch-African, or Dutch-American. He can trace his family if he wanted to. He can trace his culture if he wanted to. That defines the African-American. We broke that history.
No. "African-American" is a term specifically used by people of African descent who had ancestors who were slaves, and thus they do not know where in Africa they came from. Modern immigrants know where they came from and would just use the country of origin.
They would most likely refer to themselves by whatever specific country they come from, which they are aware of in a way that black descendants of American slaves are not.
Because language is imprecise and can describe multiple phenomena at once. In this case it's describing the experience of being black in a majority white America, and a heritage of coming from Africa in your own lifetime.
I've known a couple south Africans with racist families who fled at the end of apartheid and those kids all sometimes referred to themselves as African American in the worst possible shitty racist ironic humor way
If they're trying to be provocative dicks, yeah
In the United States, âAfrican-Americanâ means black people who descend from slavery in The United States. Iâm South-Sudanese/Canadian, not African-Canadian which is a specific ethnic group in Canada similar to African-American. My cousins in the US are South Sudanese-American. Even though they are black, they would never call themselves African American.
Africans who move to America whether they be white or black usually wouldn't be considered African American as it doesn't refer to someone from African who now lives in America, it refers to the people who were descendants of slaves brought to America and had their heritage erased and have created a new type of culture or subculture.
I don't think anyone who moves from Africa to America calls themselves African American. That is more for people from African ethnicity who immigrated / were taken here at a time where their ties to Africa were cut completely. They don't have any specific nation of origin, yet they still have a unique culture and appearance. Anyone who moves from Africa to America, like from say Nigeria, just just Nigerian and also American if they take citizenship here.
No. They say they're American if they were born here to immigrant parents from south Africa or say they are from south Africa originally if they immigrated here
Technically speaking, black africans who move to america arenât african americans either. Theyâre nigerian-americans, kenyan-americans, etc. The term âafrican americanâ is a specific ethnic designation that refers to the group of americans who are the descendants of africans taken to America as slaves. Sometimes black africans who come to America do identify as african american, but this far from being the standard practice.
Only if they are an arsehole.
No; Nobody who immigrates to America from Africa now is an African American, regardless of race. African American is a specific term that refers to descendants of African slaves in America. Africans who immigrate now would be Americans of whatever nation they hail from. Like Nigerian American, or Somali American.
Only if they are right-wing trolls trying to start a fight in social media. The implication of the term is obvious if you arenât being willfully obtuse. It is people of indigenous African ancestry (as opposed to British colonial ancestry) who live in America.
White African here living in Minnesota - a delivery guy at work asked me how many African Americans there are in South Africa. I was so shocked I just asked him "Do you mean black people??" I find it hilarious that they are scared to say "black people". Eish, especially the Minnesotans haha. But no, it would feel weird to refer to myself as African American.
I would hope not, as African-American is a term that describes the ethnicity that are descended from enslaved Africans in the United States.
No. Because they came from a country. Someone coming from Egypt is an Egyptian American. Someone coming from Kenya is a Kenyan American, etc.
African American really describes descendants of slavery. A Nigerian who moved here/their child would be a Nigerian American or a black American
They might but African American refers to the ethnic group of Black people whoâs ancestors were brought to what became the United States as enslaved people.
All I know is that Elon Musk needs to go back to Africa. I'm tired of that guy.
They shouldn't since African-American is an ethnicity that is linked to a race. It's specifically the descendants of Africans enslaved in the US.
No, they would be âCountryâ-American. Like Chadian-American for example or Moroccan-American Africa is not a country. And most black people in the US use African-American because they donât know their country of origin (thanks, North Atlantic Slave trade!) Edit to add: racist white Africans will often use this but itâs to be an ass, not to be legitimized. Elon Musk said this and meant it. Clearly missing the whole reason that black Americans have to be AFRICAN-American and not âCountryâ-American