As a racial identity for Black people, the popular term “African-American” is an inaccurate, meaningless stereotype and promotes racial apartheid. The term stereotypes and gives false racial identity to Brown and Black people; hides, distorts, sanitizes and revises history; and segregates Brown and Black people from each other.
Africans are not a racial identity. Africa is a continent with 53 sovereign countries populated with White and Black people. People from Africa do not identity as “Africans.” They identify by their country or tribe: Egyptian, Zulu, Kenyan, Moroccan, Hutu, South African, Mandingo, etc. Each has a separate government, language and culture. All resent and reject being identified by a monolithic stereotype.
The term “African-American” hides, sanitizes, distorts and revises harsh racial history by inferring citizenship, identity, status and acceptance where none exists. “African-American” has no historical basis or accuracy. It was created in the early 1970s as a slick marketing slogan and popularized in the ’80s. No historical record — oral or written — slave poster, newspaper story, book, court or military record, biography etc. identifies Black people by anything other than Negro, Black, Colored and nigger. Identifying by “American” infers full rights, privileges and protections of citizenship America provides. Was Dred Scott an “American”? Were slaves “Americans”? Were Black soldiers in WWI & II “Americans”? Were civil rights petitioners in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s “Americans”? The term is as historically revisionist, distorting and false as identifying the Wright Brothers as astronauts.
“African-American” segregates Brown and Black people from each other. The term refers only to descendants of Black slaves. Brown and Black Americans who are not slave descendants — Mexicans, Indians, Haitians, Egyptians, Puerto Ricans, Saudis, Cubans, Pacific Islanders and many others — accept being Brown and Black people but reject being identified as “African-American.” Example: Massachusetts and Louisiana had Black governors but Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal (an Indian-American) was not identified as “African-American.” What should be a natural political, social, economic and cohesive base is prevented because a significant number of Black people are marginalized by self, popular and media labeling “African-American.” Use of the term establishes South African-style racial apartheid.
Black is the English translation for Negro from Spanish. Negro and black are synonymous. Black and “African-American” are not. Slaves were Black. Homer Plessy was Negro. Negro Leagues had Black baseball players. HBCU means Historically Black Colleges and Universities. MLK, Jr. and Malcolm X identified themselves as Negro and Black; Louis Stokes formed the Congressional Black Caucus; Stokely Carmichael preached Black Power; Huey Newton formed the Black Panther Party; and James Brown sang “I’m Black and I’m Proud.”
Adopt the historical, social, linguistic accuracy and identify Black people as Black. The meaningless identity “African-American” substitutes for “Colored” and promotes apartheid.