US: What is our name? From African to African again
August 7, 2007 by Staff
Filed under News, Weekly Columns
(Akiit.com) In America, the title of people from Africa has slowly completed a full circle that started 360 years ago. The names in the circle have gone from African to almost all the way back to African. All Africans were initially negroes to the first group of Portuguese, from the Spanish definition that literally meant black. The dreadful N-word came around this same time period, but the N-word wasn’t intended to hurt Africans in America until the 1800s.
During the 1800s, colored became the kinder word. Later, negro and colored became acceptable. During
the civil rights movement, some appointed leaders of African descent chose the titles Black and Afro-American as they made the previously mentioned terms politically incorrect. The term Afro-American stuck from the 1970s and 1980s until afros faded away; until the afros resurgence that came during the 1990s hip-hop influence of the hair style. After Afro-American went away, the title Black stayed around and hasn’t left since. Now ‘African-American’ is becoming more and more popular as some people fight to hold on to the title of ‘Black’.
Some people of African descent outside of Africa are offended by any connection with Africa and some Africans born in Africa are offended by any connections to people of African descent that were historically forced to migrate to other countries. Will people of African descent in America and in other places outside of Africa all call themselves African one day? Scary thought for some people. Scary for the enemy that is; and the enemy is those forces that oppose our peoples unity and organization. The enemy could be white, black or African.
Black is a color of the spectrum , which occurs when all colors in the spectrum are mixed and it does not pertain to a race of people. People are connected with cultures and races, not colors. My shoes are black. I am an African born in America. African-American is a link to ownership of land and present location. Even though the slave traders stole Africans, bought them or murdered them and raped them and their home land for resources; some Africans in other countries still have a connection with the place where they were intentionally disconnected from. All other races of people can use the place of their origin with the ‘hyphenated American’ at the end, but when people of African descent do the same thing there is a problem.
Chinese say “Chinese-American” with no problem. Mexicans say “Mexican-American” with no problem. Any other race says the same thing, but when an African-American tries to relate to his or her home land, the racist show who they are and they have a problem with the African-American attempting to link with his or her history or culture. What this shows me is that those particular people are satisfied that they have disconnected Africans from their culture world wide or they would not get so upset when Africans abroad call themselves what they are and that term is African. I have heard the oppressors ask stupid questions like, what tribe are you from? As if one isn’t from Africa if he or she doesn’t know the name of the tribe that his or her ancestors were stolen from.
This is a separation tactic. I will make a poor attempt at paraphrasing a Malcolm X statement here by telling you that if you were on earth and put some biscuits ingredients together and placed the mixture in the oven and cooked the biscuits and then took them out of the oven they would be called biscuits? Of course they would be called biscuits. If you made biscuits the exact same way and cooked them in the same stove on the moon, would those biscuits be called puppies? No, they would still be called biscuits.
This common sense statement works for people as well. If two Africans have sex in Africa or America, these children will be Africans regardless of where they were born. They won’t be Native Americans, nor Europeans no matter how hard they try. The people are forced to be African no matter what they say because that is what the creator made them. Conscious people in America like to be labeled as African Americans or simply Africans. The unconscious people like to be called black, a combination of the rainbow.
By Rodgerick Williams