Skye Reynolds posted...
The future may look at terms like "black" and "African American" and decide that one or both terms are racist because they were the terminology of the generation that killed Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner.
African American never really sit well with me, TBH. I mean, sure it's preferable to many other words that start with the letter N, but when I see it, I feel the following messages are being sent.
1. That a black person's identity is about Africa, first and foremost, and not something that can be divorced.
2. That they're not "real Americans" or otherwise carry a subtext of immigration even if they were natively born here.
3. Either that they belong in Africa or they're trying to bring Africa to America
4. Dismissal of the identity of Black individuals that are not from Africa (for example, New Guinea)
5. That their heritage is tied to the African slave trade even if it isn't
Black isn't a perfect word either because it causes issues with various other non caucasian-European people that leads to things like a team in Washington calling themselves Redskins.
I don't have a better solution at the moment. I think going back to Caucasian / Negroid / Mongoloid might be better in the long run but that's not a fight I care enough about.
