Word: africanism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...evolving, remains in many ways stubborn and resistant to change. Linguists divide language's parts of speech into two classes: open and closed. Words in the open class are more flexible. Open nouns can adapt quite fluidly as culture changes, so that "Negro" shifts to "colored," then "black" and "African-American." Pronouns, however, belong to the closed class of words; they are the building blocks of language and hence are more difficult to alter...
Fazio suggested that Democrats who would not otherwise vote in mid-term elections may cast their ballots for party candidates as an expression of support for the president. He said he expected this phenomenon to be particularly prevalent among African Americans...
...reason African Americans support President Clinton is that we see historical hypocrisy in American morals [DIVIDING LINE, Oct. 5]. For inappropriate consensual sexual behavior, America demanded of President Clinton contriteness and apologies, while during 350 years of American enslavement and apartheid, black women were sexually brutalized by white men without recourse to justice. African Americans have never received apologies or other expressions of remorse. Americans see in the faces of black people the reflections of the past sins of their nation's approved immoral behavior. Anti-Clinton politicians and public notables are touting morals that never existed in our nation...
America was built by the lash and by liberty; both the immoral and the moral contributed to its greatness. African Americans have been able to deal with this anomaly. It is time for other Americans to become aware that it was such contradictions that wove this nation into what it is today. HELEN GENTRY Detroit...
...there were 890,000 teenage pregnancies in the U.S. in 1995. When the just compiled figures for that year were released last week, however, most public-health agencies were positively aglow--and with good reason: the number is the lowest it's been in more than 20 years. Among African Americans the news was even better. You'd have to go back 40 years to find a time when there were fewer pregnant teens...