African American

African Americans, also known as Afro-Americans, Black Americans, or simply blacks are an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to West and Central Africa. Many African Americans have European and/or Native American ancestry as well.

The term African American

Political overtones

The term African American carries important political overtones. Previous terms used to identify Americans of African ancestry were conferred upon the group by whites and were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which became tools of white supremacy and oppression. There developed among blacks in America a growing desire for a term of their own choosing.

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With the political consciousness that emerged from the political and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Negro fell into disfavor among many African Americans. It had taken on a moderate, accommodationist, even Uncle Tomish, connotation. In this period, a growing number of blacks in the U.S., particularly African American youth, celebrated their blackness and their historical and cultural ties with the African continent. The Black Power movement defiantly embraced black as a group identifier—a term they themselves had repudiated only two decades earlier—a term often associated in English with things negative and undesirable, proclaiming, "Black is beautiful."

Related Topics:
1960s - 1970s - Uncle Tomish - Blackness - Black Power

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In this same period, others favored the term Afro-American; this particular term never gained much traction, but by the 1990s, the term African American had emerged as the leading choice of self-referential term. Just as other ethnic groups in American society historically had adopted names descriptive of their families' geographical points of origin (such as Italian-American, Irish-American, Polish-American), many blacks in America expressed a preference for a similar term. Because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the U.S. under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker.

Related Topics:
1990s - Italian-American - Irish-American - Polish-American

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For many, African American is more than a name expressive of cultural and historical roots. The term expresses African pride and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the African diaspora—an embracing of the notion of pan-Africanism earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Dubois and, later, George Padmore.

Related Topics:
Diaspora - Marcus Garvey - W.E.B. Dubois - George Padmore

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A discussion of the term African American and related terms can be found in the journal article "The Politicization of Changing Terms of Self Reference Among American Slave Descendants" in American Speech v 66 is 2 Summer 1991 p. 133-46.

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Who is African American?

To be considered African American in the United States of America, not even half of one's ancestry need be black African. The nation's answer to the question "Who is black?" long has been that a "black" is any person with any known African ancestry. This definition reflects the long experience with racism, white supremacy, slavery, and, later, with Jim Crow laws.

Related Topics:
United States of America - Racism - White supremacy - Slavery - Jim Crow laws

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In the Southern United States, it became known as the one-drop rule, meaning that a single drop of "black blood" makes a person "black". Some courts have called it the traceable amount rule, and anthropologists call it the hypo-descent rule, meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group. This definition emerged from the American South to become America's national definition, generally accepted by whites and Africans -- but for different reasons. White supremacists, whose motivation was racist, considered anyone with African ancestry tainted, inherently inferior morally and intellectually and, thus, subordinate. During slavery, there was also a strong economic incentive to maximize the number of individuals who could be owned, bred, worked, traded and sold outright as human chattel. The designation of anyone possessing any trace of African ancestry as "black", and, therefore, of subordinate status to whites, guaranteed a source of free or cheap labor during slavery and for decades afterward. For African Americans, the one-drop system of racial designation was a significant factor in ethnic solidarity. African Americans generally shared a common lot in society and, therefore, common cause -- regardless of their ethnic admixture and social and economic stratification.

Related Topics:
Southern United States - One-drop rule - Anthropologists - Racist

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The United States Supreme Court formalized the legal status of this rule in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), where the Court affirmed the legality of racial segregation and upheld the State of Louisiana's ruling that, despite being 7/8 white, Homer Plessy's one black great-grandparent rendered him legally non-white and, therefore, subject to being barred from whites-only railway carriages.

Related Topics:
United States Supreme Court - Plessy v. Ferguson - 1896 - Racial segregation - Louisiana - Homer Plessy

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People of caucasoid origin or appearance, including whites, Persians, Indians, and Arabs, are traditionally not considered African American though they or their ancestors may have emigrated from the African continent after uncountable generations of residence. This has occasionally caused social friction when South African whites or caucasoid North Africans living in America have self-identified as African American, either for personal reasons of pride or in order to gain affirmative action benefits sometimes presented to traditionally-defined African Americans. People of south Asian or east Asian origin or appearance generally do not self-identify as African Americans even if they or their recent ancestors came to the United States from the African continent.

Related Topics:
Caucasoid - Persians - Indians - Arab - Ancestor - Emigrated - South African - North African - Affirmative action - South Asian - East Asian

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In the last decade, a growing movement has developed, towards the adoption and acceptance of the term biracial, to classify people of mixed race. This term is widely used by mixed race people that want to acknowledge all of their ancestry, instead of being forced to identify solely as "black".

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Terms no longer in common use

The term Negro, which was widely used until the 1960s, today increasingly is considered passé and, in some quarters, inappropriate or derogatory. It is still fairly commonly used by older individuals and in the Deep South. Once widely considered acceptable, Negro fell into disfavor for reasons already herein stated. The self-referential term of preference for Negro became black.

Related Topics:
Negro - 1960s

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Negroid is a term used by European anthropologists first in the 18th century and then in the 19th century to describe indigenous Africans and their descendants throughout the African diaspora. As with most descriptors of race based on inconsistent, unscientific phenotypical standards, the term is meaningless.

Related Topics:
18th century - 19th century - Race

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Other largely defunct, seldom used terms to refer to African Americans are mulatto and colored. Even so, the use of the word "colored" can still be found today in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP. The American use of the term mulatto originally was used to mean the offspring of a "pure African black" and a "pure European white". The Latin root of the word is mulo, as in "mule", implying incorrectly that, like mules, which are horse-donkey hybrids, mulattoes are sterile crosses of two different species. For example, in the early 20th century, African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, who had slaves as mothers and white fathers, were referred to as mulattoes. While not as common as "mixed" or "biracial," or even "multiracial," mulatto is still sometimes used to refer to people of mixed parentage and, despite its origin, is not considered derogatory in certain western societal groups.

Related Topics:
Mulatto - Colored - NAACP - Mule - Horse - Donkey - Hybrid - 20th century - Booker T. Washington - Frederick Douglass

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The term quadroon referred to a person who was of one-fourth African descent, perhaps someone born to a Caucasian father and a mulatto mother. Someone of one-eighth African descent was technically an octoroon, although the term often was used to refer to any white person with even a hint of black ancestry.

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Mulatto and terms with the -roon suffix persisted in a social context for a number of decades, but by the mid twentieth century, they no longer were in common use. With the end of slavery, there was no longer a strong commercial incentive to classify blacks by their African-European ancestral admixture. The occasional use of these terms, however, does still persist in electronic media, literature and in some social settings.

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