Quote:
Originally Posted by JediKooter
I see what you're saying, but, African American almost always implies that they mean black for those who use it as opposed to actually referring to someone's ancestry. Almost like they are afraid to just say 'black'. I'll buy into the 'African-American' title when people start using it and are not referring to ones skin color.
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I don't think that's true. dark-skinnned Caribbean people who are not of African descent don't use the term African-American. Dark-skinned people of New Zealander origin don't use the term. But people who are African-American but have fairly light skin do use the term.
I agree that people often misuse it. They might call someone African-American without any idea what their real ancestry is. Hell, I've seen morons in my classes call people in Africa African-American. But I'm not interested in Language for Dummies. I'm interested in whether a term is more accurate, less discriminatory and more meaningful. In some senses using the term "black" makes sense since it's what people are actually responding to, someone's skin color. But using a more accurate and meaningful term might help to remind those people that trying to lump people together because of pigmentation doesn't make sense, and in fact has been and is hugely damaging. I think this is the meaning of PC, in essence, is that by using better terms we can remind ourselves to think in a better way.