Is "African American" really a good term to identify Americans of the negro race?

Do people in other countries say they are, for instance, African Canadian or African Mexican or whatever?

It’s more accurate than the term “Caucasian”. When you get down to it, all of these racial terms are only loosely grounded in empirical fact, anyway. They’re used largely for very broad statistical and reporting purposes, where the most important consideration is how people classify themselves, not how they’re objectively classified.

In light of this, it would be best to use the term that the largest number of members of that particular demographic can relate to, whether or not it describes an objective reality.

I had a friend in college who grew up in Egypt. Her father had Egyptian citizenship; her mother had US citizenship and she was a dual citizen. I think she is technically the truest “African American” that I’ve ever met.

Is Freema Agyeman an African American?

The term “African American” is definitely problematic.

Unfortunately, as you point out at the end of your question, that there isn’t a better term.

I, too, don’t want to offend but the term strikes me as a bit ridiculous. How far back do you go? I’m white, or Caucasian if you like. My grandparents came from Russia. They have (had) the right to say they were Russian-Americans. My parents do not. I sure as heck do not.
I recently saw an article in Scientific American that traced the mitochondrial DNA of every human back to a single person spot in Africa 340,000 years ago. Can EVERYONE say they are African American?
It seems the only time this stuff matters is when someone is checking a certain box on a form that will give someone an extra edge or opportunity.
I’m old enough to remember when the terms: Caucasian and Negro were ok. then they were changed to White and Black, then…

You tell your white bread, blonde, South African daughter-in-law to check the box “African American” if she is applying for a job or government contract. Arguably she has more right to the term than most people who check it now.

@LuckyGuy My point exactly. And she IS white bread, blonde, blue-eyed.

I think a people have a right to be called by the name they currently collectively call themselves and I do my best to use that term until another is decided on.

White people wringing their hands about ‘African-American’ aren’t bothered when Rudy Giuliani is referred to as Italian-American, or Marco Rubio is called Cuban-American.

The nit-picking about the“correctness” of ‘African-American’ is willfully obtuse when it’s not simple hostility towards black Americans.

African American is a made up ethnicity created so black people living in America could embrace their African roots (though they’ve probably never been there) and their American roots. Black people born in America today are not literally “African Americans” – they’re Americans who happen to be black.

What cracks me up is when people think African American is the PC way to say black. It’s not. Assuming all black people in America are “African American” is ignorant. Who says they’re American at all? They’re certainly black, so why not say that? I’ve never known a black person to get offended when called black. That’s what they are, and there’s nothing offensive about it.

Wouldn’t you just refer to his girlfriend as being African or South African?

Their children would be African-American.

I don’t see any problem in using the term people prefer given that it’s nothing more than an issue of respect. That said, the black people I grew up around always told me to call them “black” and disliked the term “African American.” One reason for this is that several of the people in question were from the Caribbean and did not consider themselves to be African in any sense other than the way in which we might all be considered African under the Out of Africa theory. Thus I have always defaulted to “black.” Were someone to tell me that they preferred “African American,” however, I would have no problem using that term around them. Again, it’s just a matter of respect.

Again, we are talking about three different things; race vs. citizenship vs. ancestry. Those who call Rudy an Italian-American would be referring to his ancestry. If talking citizenship, he is the grandson of Italian-Americans, but he is just an American. He is still considered a caucasian, or “white” when checking the little “race” box on all of our government forms.

The problem with the term African-American is that it is used as all three. So since so many white people are African-American by ancestry or citizenship, what does it really mean as far as race goes?

@captainsmooth The girlfriend will be an African American after she gets her US Citizenship.

If a black person has ancestry in England or Italy stretching back for several hundred years and then comes to the U.S., shouldn’t he be called Anglo-American or Italian American? It seems demeaning to me to have race trump everything else.

It doesn’t “trump” anything. I am not talking about references in conversation. I am specifically referring to those pesky little “race” boxes that we are required to check on countless forms. We are catagorized into “race” on lots of different documents. But there is no race classification for black people because instead, the polite way to refer to them is with a term that only refers to a country of origin and a citizenship, which many people of many races can also qualify for.

“African-American” is not parallel to “Italian-American.” Africa isn’t a country. It’s a continent.

I agree that there’s an inherent problem in mixing the terminology of nationality, national heritage, and citizenship with the terms of ethnicity and race (insofar as we can even define “race”). I’m just wondering why it’s so important to label people. Do you have to say that she’s a something or an something? If it’s necessary to explain her background to people (is it?), why not just spend an extra syllable or two and say that she comes from South Africa?

If she has to check a box on some form, chances are she’ll see a choice that says “white” or “Caucasian.” Probably she should check that one.

@Skaggfacemutt I don’t think it is correct to say that the term African American is used for race, citizenship, and ancestry. It is not, for instance, a citizenship term and would never be used that way in ordinary English. If a Finnish person moves to America, we don’t call them Finnish American. That is a term that would be used for people of Finnish descent born in America. Thus your future daughter-in-law will not ever be an African American under ordinary usage. She will be an African immigrant to the United States, or an African-born person with US citizenship.

Even if that was not how the terms had historically been used, however, it wouldn’t matter. Just because something follows the same grammatical pattern as other terms doesn’t mean it follows the same logical pattern. Every language has terms that are exceptions to the usual patterns. So long as they are competent users of the language, people living in the United States understand “African American” to refer to race and not to citizenship or ancestry. Regardless of what other formulations exist within the English language, then, it is not really problematic to use “African American” as a racial term.

Clearly the expression “African American” is well intended but not very useful.

If we really have any need to describe the skin colour of other people (I doubt we do) we could use the terms: light skinned vs. dark skinned.

If we need to describe the country from which a person or their parents originate, that is not so complicated.

Personally, I’d rather hear adjectives that tell me about their admirable personality traits than their skin colour or ancestral country of origin. This is more relevant and interesting than what racial make-up their appearance suggests.

Negro race? What century are you living in?

What’s wrong with the term “black”? It is true that I have a few relatives in Africa, but all of them are by marriage. I myself am unhappy with the term African-American, as it is by no means accurate. Yet it has a specific meaning in some contexts, – in the Library of Congress Authorities, it means “an American citizen of African (i.e. black African) descent.” It does not mean any other person who may be white, or Asian, and was born somewhere in Africa. We don’t need these labels. Suggest to your putative daughter in law, @Skaggfacemutt, that she should call herself American (once she has her papers) just like any other U.S. citizen (that is, if the question should arise).

@tinyfaery I decided to leave it alone, but I’m glad someone said it.

@bea2345 There’s no indication in the question that the future daughter-in-law thinks she will soon be African American. This seems to be just @Skaggfacemutt‘s impression of the situation.

The word race… we are ONE race. Another race are Orangs or Dolphins. But we are one race.

Just filled out a form for a background check to coach my kids’ teams with the following categories for race: Asian/Pacific Islander; Black; White (Includes Hispanics/Spainish Descent); American Indian/Alaska Native; Unknown

I just had to fill out a form for a contract that had the following words:
“The offeror represents, for general statistical purposes that it [is] ,/ [is not] a small disadvantaged business concern as defined in 13 CFR 124.1002
(If you checked “is” ) the offeror shall check the category in which its ownership falls:
_Black American
_Hispanic American
_Native American (American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, or Native Hawaiians
_Asian Pacific American (a long list including: China, Japan, Korea, Burma Thailand…Tuvalu, or Naura ~28 countries).
_Subcontinent Asian (Asian-Indian) American
_Individual other than the preceding.

There are competitive contracts set aside specifically for the above groups giving them an edge over White American owned companies.

Just for the record, there are also preferences given for: women owned, veteran owned, service-disabled veteran owned but that is off topic.
Here’s another off topic comment:
Any White American owned company that won a competitive contract, won it on merit alone.

@bea2345 What you say is true, of course it is not a big thing with my daughter-in-law. She is caucasian. The situation just brought up to me the use of the term African American, which has always kind of bothered me, because it suggests that black people are somehow less american than I am. I do like the classifications that @captainsmooth just listed. If I were black, I would rather call myself black than African American.

@LuckyGuy, I’ve seen those contracts create some laughable scams. Yet, you have to award the contract to the minority owned business.

I think we place too much emphasis on labels.

I agree, @kitszu , but it comes up. If you witness a crime, and the police ask you to describe the perpetrator (who happened in this instance to be black), you have to express that somehow. The polite way at the moment is to say African American. But for all you know, he might be a Jamacian. I don’t get the Africa American thing, because it really doesn’t mean anything.

I think it’s far better than the German words “Gastarbeiter” and “Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund” for people whose ancestors came to Germany several generations ago. Only recently have Germans begun to use terms and phrases like Hamed Abdel-Samad (Arabic: حامد عبد الصمد‎, born in 1972 in Gizeh, Egypt) is a German-Egyptian political scientist. Interestingly in reverse order.

So I think Americans should be proud about the long tradition of terms like African-American or Chinese-American. It makes it all clear that the people are Americans. They are not guests and most have not migrated to the US, but were born there.

Every American is a XY American including English Americans and German Americans. Even Native Americans are in fact Asian Americans, because the Americas was devoid of people not so long ago.

@mattbrowne – notwithstanding my former post, I have to agree with you.

@mattbrowne I agree but how far back do we get to go before we are splitting hairs? These are no longer terms used for pride of ones country they are terms used to segregate. The segregation is the issue.

We are not a country divivded among “italian, irish, african, jewish, asian, hispanic etc.” people.

We are a country that should UNITE as being a home for all, as being an example. Saddly we are not.