In today’s edition of the LA Times, John McWhorter wrote an article on the whole African-American Vs. Black debate. I will include a couple of paragraphs, but you must go to latimes.com for the rest of it.
“Modern America is home now to millions of immigrants who were born in Africa. Their cultures and identities are split between Africa and the United States. They have last names like Onwughalu and Senkofa. They speak languages like Wolof, Twi, Yoruba and Hausa, and speak English with an accent. They were raised on African cuisine, music, dance and dress styles, customs and family dynamics. Their children often speak or at least understand their parents’ native language.”
“With the number of African immigrants in the U.S. nearly tripling since 1990, the use of “African American” is becoming increasingly strained. For example, Alan Keyes, the Republican Senate candidate in Illinois, has claimed that as a descendant of slaves, he is the “real” African American, compared with his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, who has an African father and white mother. And the reason Keyes and others are making arguments such as this is rather small, the idea being that “African American” should refer only to people with a history of subordination in this country  as if African immigrants such as Amadou Diallo, who was killed by police while reaching for his wallet, or Caribbean ones such as torture victim Abner Louima have found the U.S. to be the Land of Oz.” (full article - login required)
I doubt very seriously that if most of us dropped the term African-American, we would go into some state of confusion. I commented about this whole thing not to long ago. There are many people in the black community that do not want to consider 1st generation Africans as being “authentic African-Americans”. I believe that this is largely in part that the fact that Africans can come over to this country with nothing, and through hard work and sacrifice, become successful WITHOUT GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION flies in the face of all those who believe that Blacks cannot make it in America.
Years ago, we were pumping ourselves up about going back to Africa to help rebuild. Now Africans are coming over here and taking the jobs that we don’t want.
