Word: africanizing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...upset about it," said Ramsey, who is African-American. "Although I am aware that these incidents have occurred on campus, this is the first time I have seen or encountered it specifically where I live...
...term "African-American" is not new. But black leaders who endorsed the change saw the shift as a cultural statement, a move beyond the exigencies that drove the adoption of "black" itself 30 years ago. In 1988, Jackson argued that to be called "black" made the community "baseless," while "African-American" restored the community's "cultural integrity" and "proper historical context." Ramona Edelin, president of the National Urban Coalition, said in 1989 that "African-American" stood as an expression of unity with Africa and the African diaspora, of whom African-Americans were first and foremost a part...
...African" in African-American, then, locates black culture outside the United States, in its ancestral, African roots. At the same time, the "-American" places blacks among the ranks of the American hyphenated. Among these ethnic groups, too, the move toward hyphenation has been a conscious, progressive struggle. Only in our own generation has "Asian-American" supplanted "Oriental" and other such terms...
...find myself stuck with the duality, stuck with the label. And it is into this semantic morass that "African-American" now plunges black Americans. By choosing "African-American" over "black," blacks may give up that historical grounding that Chin envied in favor of the duality he feared. The attempt to return to African culture can only be a kind of tokenism, a search for the "authentic" in costumes and food festivals--just as I exercise my "Chineseness" in culinary exploits. The threat--as Chin and others saw--of trying to root onself in Africa is that it can become...
...might be argued that this shift simply represents a different historical moment: blacks, confident in their position within American culture, should now identify with a larger global community. Perhaps the shift to "African-American" is part of a larger multicultural strategy, whereby blacks seek to place themselves within an America made up of many different cultural groups. But the cultural dualities that have confronted Asian-Americans should demonstrate the dangers of identifying with the "homeland." And perhaps blacks should be wary of giving up the cultural leverage that their unique, hard-won identity in American culture gives them...