Klarinet Archive - Posting 000286.txt from 1999/02

From: "Kevin Fay (LCA)" <kevinfay@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] "African American"
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1999 17:36:26 -0500

Jim Reed wrote:

<<<I find that many blacks prefer being referred to as black and see
themselves as being different from Africans who also see themselves as being
different from black Americans (something that's
held true in my experiences dating back to college campuses, from Ann Arbor
to Detroit, in the sixties). At the same time, my white liberal friends get
real upset when I refer to blacks as black and chastise me for not calling
them African-American.>>>

Jim & Ed White point out how the usage of relatively simple words get so
politically charged as to become meaningless. Here's an anecdote (which
happens to be true) that's a little bit on the lighter side:

I had an office-mate when I first started working in NYC. He was from South
Africa, but white (Afrikaans). He fled SA because his father, a judge,
refused to put black people in jail unless they had actually committed a
crime--for which he was de-judged. Fred decided that practicing law in SA
wasn't such a hot career for him in SA at that point.

Anyway, when Frederick first came to the U.S. as a student, he needed a job.
Going through the application form, he was asked if he was an
"African-American." Thinking that this clearly applied to him--he was,
after all, from Africa, and was now in America (and ignorant of the
denotation of the word)--he checked the box. (He also figured that he
wasn't Caucasian, since his ancestry was Dutch and not SW Asian).

The interviewed spent most of the interview telling Frederick what these
words "really meant." He did, however, get the job.

kjf

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