The term 'African American' was rarely used until Jesse Jackson started popularizing it.
The most formative years of my life were spent in the Caribbean. I was essentially raised and mentored by two different black men (I'm white trailer park trash originally from Alabama). And both of those men both took great offense to being called African American. The same went for many of the people I knew down there. However, I've rarely heard actual mainlanders take offense to the term.
I've always thought that a person born in the US was simply an American. Not an Irish American or an African American or Scottish American, etc. If you're born in the US, you're simply an American. I've never understood the desire to want to differentiate one's self like that.
Perhaps I feel that way because my own father left when I was a toddler and I never had any kind of strong family connection or culture taught to me by anyone else in my family. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had a strong family unit that shared a common culture or something like that. But I still think terms like that are divisive.
IAmBroom · 19h ago
Again, a white person telling us how African Americans/blacks ought to speak and feel about themselves, based on his personal experiences.
I hope they aren't the uppity kind who won't listen to reason.
ryandv · 18h ago
Yes, thank you for calling this out. Really tired of whites prescribing their morality upon other cultures; this is how the Philippines became almost 90% Catholic, and the original indigenous religions were eradicated.
Despite all the secular garb and atheist aesthetic, religious proselytization and vicious inquisitions against heretics or non-believers are still very much alive and well today. There's a very long and unbroken history of it, and no - just like the creationists and their "proofs via banana," [0] they do not listen to reason.
> The term 'African American' was rarely used until Jesse Jackson started popularizing it.
Many words weren't popular until they were. So what?
rexpop · 19h ago
The term is divisive? But, when you notice a systematic discrimination against Americans with dark skin, how do you talk about it?
hollywood_court · 19h ago
I know you're looking for an argument here.
But I talk about it the same way any reasonably educated person talks about it.
I know racism and discrimination are alive and well here in the US and elsewhere. I have witnessed it myself many times. My mother was a career long LEO in the south. While I was growing up, I heard her and her fellow LEOs discussing how they would treat black people differently numerous times.
The first time I flew home to the states after six years, I brought my black girlfriend with me. Together, she and I saw/heard things that I still think about to this day.
I wore a tool belt and was a blue collar guy for the first ~20 years of my career. I heard racist stuff and saw discrimination pretty much every day of my career.
I'm not sure what part of my original comment would make you feel like making your comment, but I'm sorry I couldn't offend you further.
IAmBroom · 19h ago
Not all reasonably educated persons talk about it your way. Why is that so hard to imagine?
RamblingCTO · 20h ago
As a European I never understood this American way of labeling yourself after your supposed heritage. Nothing italian about "italian americans" and nothing african about "african american". Sure, there are maybe traces of the original culture in the respective subculture and we like to mingle with people who are like us. And for that labels like these help. But this heritage is so far gone that it really doesn't matter anymore. I also understand that it describes a new culture, but by using the "old" names it puts a claim on something it just can't.
I also don't get this:
“Whenever I go to Africa, I feel like a person with a legitimate place to stand on this earth. This is the name for all the feelings I’ve had all these years.”
And the "return to africa" thingy (or the new return to europe thingy). Africa is a big ass continent and there is really no cultural homogeneity. They never ever stepped foot on african, italian or german soil before. You're all american, period. This feels like self-segregating. A culture isn't something you can just consume or put on yourself.
PS: I'm very understanding of the issue that you want to cling to some roots. But I don't like that it's becoming a "I vs them" thing and that it gets consumed and is used for projection.
fallinghawks · 19h ago
I completely agree with the "You're all American, period" sentiment, but I suspect you haven't had the lovely experience of being asked "Where are you from" and have your <American location> repeatedly not accepted, usually by the phrase "No, where are you really from," as if it's entirely impossible for me to have been born here.
Were I white, the first question would be unlikely to be asked in the first place, its answer automatically accepted, and if the enquirer had poor language skills, it would immediately be qualified with "I meant, What's your heritage" or "Where is your family from."
There may be self segregation but some are doing the segregation for us.
IAmBroom · 19h ago
As a European you're an outsider looking in, telling us what our American experiences are.
Consider that your POV might not be objective fact.
Edit: As one counterpoint fact, in my city there are 2nd-generation Italian-Americans who speak English with an accent. Born in American hospitals, raised in our public schools, and don't have the local American accent. "There's nothing Italian about them" is overreaching.
rootingforroots · 16h ago
>I also understand that it describes a new culture, but by using the "old" names it puts a claim on something it just can't.
Italians from 2025 have as little to do with their Italian great grandparents from 1800 as Italians Americans with the same great grandparents. Clothes, habits, values, food, you name it.
>I'm very understanding of the issue that you want to cling to some roots.
Thank you for understanding but it is not clinging to roots, it is about recongizing existing roots. Humans do weird stuff all the time, many times that weird stuff can be understood by looking at who raise you, and who raised them, and so on.
>But this heritage is so far gone that it really doesn't matter anymore.
Kindly, that is not for you to say.
>But I don't like that it's becoming a "I vs them"
This saddens me too.
mvieira38 · 19h ago
The Sopranos has an episode more or less about this, Commendatori. It's basically the glorified crew visiting their "home" in Italy and being your run-of-the-mill american tourists. Some interesting stuff is Paulie asking for pasta and red sauce because he doesn't like the fancy seafood he's been served, and Tony complaining about "lots of fish" to Carm over the phone.
When they get home they immediately resume their LARP and say they felt "right at home" lmao
Reubachi · 18h ago
The sopranos is a fictional dramatized soap opera though, made for a primarily American audience who are already vaguely aware of the "clash" between Italian Americans and Italians.
My "greek" side of my (american) family goes to Greece 2x a year for weeks, speaks greek at home, primarily eat a mediteranean diet etc. When I think of them, I think of "my greek family", and it certainly isn't some vanity thing.
No comments yet
rexpop · 19h ago
> this heritage is so far gone
This only makes sense if you think heritage is like a dusting of snow that melts when one comes in from the cold, but these people carried their heritage with them. Maybe "Italian" isn't quite the right word, anymore, but that doesn't mean they've been planed flat by the Lathe of Heaven.
Avshalom · 20h ago
NYT trying desperately to justify using hacked material (against their own stated policies) and giving a nazi psuedonymity (against policy) to try and gin up a scandal about a popular candidate.
inerte · 20h ago
I am not up to date to your first 2 statements, but my impression after reading the article is that it’s saying it was alright for Mamdani to say he’s African American.
femiagbabiaka · 20h ago
I agree that the phenomenon you’re speaking of is happening, but this column argues that Zohran did nothing wrong. Of course it does so along racial sectarian lines (African-American is exactly as meaningful as White American) but nonetheless.
burnt-resistor · 11h ago
Well, they also railroaded Chris Hedges for not beating the drums to war based on fictional evidence.
cholantesh · 19h ago
I mean they published Bari Weiss for a long time.
burnt-resistor · 11h ago
George Carlin did a whole set on the futile bullshit of euphemisms. More often than not, they are used either to sound trendy, cool, intelligent, sensitive, or virtuous through the very large accomplishment of using different words.
Also, what about the black people who don't have an opinion of or attachment with Africa? This treats a group as unified hivemind bloc and assigns a label on them without asking for their individual consent.
pseudalopex · 9h ago
George Carlin's routine about euphemisms ignored people got PTSD outside combat. The term changed because the understanding changed.
> This treats a group as unified hivemind bloc and assigns a label on them without asking for their individual consent.
No more than saying black people.
gumboshoes · 19h ago
McWhorter is a conservative masquerading as a centrist who over the decades has made it clear he's embarrassed by his Black heritage.
tw_wankette · 18h ago
Prescribing what (to you) is acceptable behaviour to a free person is wrong.
ramesh31 · 20h ago
I think it serves a purpose, if even not for its original intended usage. African American culture is a very real thing, distinct from just "black". No one migrating from Africa would identify with the term; they have their own individual ethnic/national identity to draw on. It's a term that now encompasses the lived experiences of the native born black descendants of American slaves, whose history was erased and have lost all connection to any specific African identity. It's unique from any other kind of blackness, for which there is no other term.
IAmBroom · 19h ago
THIS is the real point. If you dissect the term, it falls apart, but as a unit it is (perhaps) the only term that describes the population.
A word can have two components separated by a space. A camel spider is neither a spider nor a camel. Combined, those two words create a new word with its own particular meaning that is useful.
Much of that community uses "black" to refer to their culture; it seems to me to be more popular by far than AA. But if one doesn't have the freedom to even name one's people ("You folk are "Indians". Now gather up yer things; we're walking you down to Florida.")...
Radical proposal: If a person or group of people you call "X" say they prefer to be called "Y", why is your opinion even relevant?
The most formative years of my life were spent in the Caribbean. I was essentially raised and mentored by two different black men (I'm white trailer park trash originally from Alabama). And both of those men both took great offense to being called African American. The same went for many of the people I knew down there. However, I've rarely heard actual mainlanders take offense to the term.
I've always thought that a person born in the US was simply an American. Not an Irish American or an African American or Scottish American, etc. If you're born in the US, you're simply an American. I've never understood the desire to want to differentiate one's self like that.
Perhaps I feel that way because my own father left when I was a toddler and I never had any kind of strong family connection or culture taught to me by anyone else in my family. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had a strong family unit that shared a common culture or something like that. But I still think terms like that are divisive.
I hope they aren't the uppity kind who won't listen to reason.
Despite all the secular garb and atheist aesthetic, religious proselytization and vicious inquisitions against heretics or non-believers are still very much alive and well today. There's a very long and unbroken history of it, and no - just like the creationists and their "proofs via banana," [0] they do not listen to reason.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXLqDGL1FSg
Many words weren't popular until they were. So what?
But I talk about it the same way any reasonably educated person talks about it.
I know racism and discrimination are alive and well here in the US and elsewhere. I have witnessed it myself many times. My mother was a career long LEO in the south. While I was growing up, I heard her and her fellow LEOs discussing how they would treat black people differently numerous times.
The first time I flew home to the states after six years, I brought my black girlfriend with me. Together, she and I saw/heard things that I still think about to this day.
I wore a tool belt and was a blue collar guy for the first ~20 years of my career. I heard racist stuff and saw discrimination pretty much every day of my career.
I'm not sure what part of my original comment would make you feel like making your comment, but I'm sorry I couldn't offend you further.
I also don't get this: “Whenever I go to Africa, I feel like a person with a legitimate place to stand on this earth. This is the name for all the feelings I’ve had all these years.”
And the "return to africa" thingy (or the new return to europe thingy). Africa is a big ass continent and there is really no cultural homogeneity. They never ever stepped foot on african, italian or german soil before. You're all american, period. This feels like self-segregating. A culture isn't something you can just consume or put on yourself.
PS: I'm very understanding of the issue that you want to cling to some roots. But I don't like that it's becoming a "I vs them" thing and that it gets consumed and is used for projection.
Were I white, the first question would be unlikely to be asked in the first place, its answer automatically accepted, and if the enquirer had poor language skills, it would immediately be qualified with "I meant, What's your heritage" or "Where is your family from."
There may be self segregation but some are doing the segregation for us.
Consider that your POV might not be objective fact.
Edit: As one counterpoint fact, in my city there are 2nd-generation Italian-Americans who speak English with an accent. Born in American hospitals, raised in our public schools, and don't have the local American accent. "There's nothing Italian about them" is overreaching.
Italians from 2025 have as little to do with their Italian great grandparents from 1800 as Italians Americans with the same great grandparents. Clothes, habits, values, food, you name it.
>I'm very understanding of the issue that you want to cling to some roots.
Thank you for understanding but it is not clinging to roots, it is about recongizing existing roots. Humans do weird stuff all the time, many times that weird stuff can be understood by looking at who raise you, and who raised them, and so on.
>But this heritage is so far gone that it really doesn't matter anymore.
Kindly, that is not for you to say.
>But I don't like that it's becoming a "I vs them"
This saddens me too.
When they get home they immediately resume their LARP and say they felt "right at home" lmao
My "greek" side of my (american) family goes to Greece 2x a year for weeks, speaks greek at home, primarily eat a mediteranean diet etc. When I think of them, I think of "my greek family", and it certainly isn't some vanity thing.
No comments yet
This only makes sense if you think heritage is like a dusting of snow that melts when one comes in from the cold, but these people carried their heritage with them. Maybe "Italian" isn't quite the right word, anymore, but that doesn't mean they've been planed flat by the Lathe of Heaven.
Also, what about the black people who don't have an opinion of or attachment with Africa? This treats a group as unified hivemind bloc and assigns a label on them without asking for their individual consent.
> This treats a group as unified hivemind bloc and assigns a label on them without asking for their individual consent.
No more than saying black people.
A word can have two components separated by a space. A camel spider is neither a spider nor a camel. Combined, those two words create a new word with its own particular meaning that is useful.
Much of that community uses "black" to refer to their culture; it seems to me to be more popular by far than AA. But if one doesn't have the freedom to even name one's people ("You folk are "Indians". Now gather up yer things; we're walking you down to Florida.")...
Radical proposal: If a person or group of people you call "X" say they prefer to be called "Y", why is your opinion even relevant?