Friday, March 27, 2015

ARE WE BLACK OR AFRICAN AMERICAN

Blog by  +Wanda Dorn              #wandascafe

I agree with Raven-Symone and other commenters, most Black people are partially a member of another ethnic group down the line.  I have Jewish, Irish, Native American and other ancestry.  During the 60's, we fought for the title "Black", and that is why such organizations as "The National Council of Negro Women" had difficulty deciding whether or not to change the name of their organization to "BlackNCNW", but each time it was considered, we decided that we as a people had worked too hard to go from "Colored" to "Negro".  In honor of that struggle way back then, we voted to retain the name "Negro".

Then in the early days of the name "African American", when Blacks were finding their voice, we were reaching out by studying Black history and to find our origin - our roots.  We had to identify that we were African and that our history didn't begin in slavery; that we had a history that is older than any other and richer than any other so we adopted the title African American.  Discovering our rich history has made us strong - ask any Black History Professor.

Now people use it interchangeably and that's good that our identity has encompassed the American side, but remembering the rich African contribution.  *Remember, "Afro" is a hairdo, "African" is an ethnicity, therefore it's African American, not Afro American.

The Black vs African American title has been a sample of how Black people are not monolithic in our knowledge, beliefs, and views as others purport us to be. It's wonderful that Black people often disagree without it being divisive. It's amazing how I agree with all the comments indicating that perhaps we are now strong enough in our position that we can be Black with African ancestry (not advocating either title), but very importantly, we can claim our other heritages without it being said that we don't want to be Black.

Being of other heritages does not altogether mean raped in slavery. Before the Jim Crow days and the laws changed, many of our fore parents married other ethnic groups, as well as during slavery, many of us fled to Native American shelters and were married. I believe there are statistics that show that a large percentage of Blacks have Native American ancestry for that reason.  Also, before we landed on the shores of America, Africans were of multiracial.  There were visitors from all over the world living with and marrying each other.  A great example of that is the Bush People who appear Asian because they have mongoloid ancestry.  The Ethiopians have Jewish and some Italian ancestry, I'm told.

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