Black or African-American?

[Alex]

When I worked at the University of Washington's serials collection in Suzzallo Library there was one thing you could learn just by scanning the collection of journals over the past 150 years: The shifting landscape of preferred social grouping names over time. I remember one single journal that did the full Negro --> Colored --> Black --> Afro-American --> African American migration over its long history. Many other racial and ethnic groups have made similar journeys.

As I've long felt, so long as there is derogatory intent in referring to a group, it doesn't matter how often you change the name since the new word will just come to be viewed that way as well.

Yeah, it is amusing that the NAACP would protest colored. But the United Negro College Fund doesn't make that word any more appropriate for general use. It is equally amusing that an adult in a remotely political position wouldn't realize that colored is off limits.

GD: I understand the shorthand of shared experience. I don't understand it being an "identity" that needs to be preserved, protected, rejoiced, worshipped, or otherwise as objectively important. If you hadn't been raised the way you were (say your parents ran away from home and started a peach farm in rural Georgia) would you (and more importantly should you) still identify as East European Jew?

[wendybeth]

Didn't catch that one, GD- I don't think I've ever seen Scrubs.

It just seems to me that changing what's acceptable every decade and even then it's only acceptable to a certain percentage of the group being addressed.....well, it's confusing and frustrating and a lot of hard feelings happen unnecessarily. The gentleman I referred to is by all accounts a really nice guy and certainly meant no harm. He falls into the ignorant but probably not racist category, and I suspect a lot of others do as well. In his day (he's older) that was the accepted term. My MIL is always saying 'Oriental' instead of Asian, just out of habit and not due to any malicious intentions, because that's what was said the majority of her life.

[Alex]

Oh, I understand getting left behind and not knowing what's current and among which groups. But colored hasn't really been well accepted for almost 40 years. You'd think it might come up before now.

[wendybeth]

Oh, he doesn't get a total pass in my book, but I am trying to be a little bit understanding. Here's the story that provides more background. It may have been a slip, but now it's becoming politicized and many of the players in this particular story have no right to throw stones. Spokane is not very diverse, although we are becoming more so, and these old white dudes that have run this town for so long are having a rough go of it. Oh, and 'colored' was a term used very much in the Deep South when I lived down there 20 or so years ago, and not just by white people. It's not okay in my book and wasn't then, but I was shocked by how many people did use it.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

GD: I understand the shorthand of shared experience. I don't understand it being an "identity" that needs to be preserved, protected, rejoiced, worshipped, or otherwise as objectively important. If you hadn't been raised the way you were (say your parents ran away from home and started a peach farm in rural Georgia) would you (and more importantly should you) still identify as East European Jew?

Honestly, that's a hard question for me to answer. I've seen both sides of the coin on that one. I guess for me, the bottom line is that I do see value in it, but I don't see it as something to get as angry about as some people do. I understand, and participate in to an extent, the desire to preserve and promote that kind of trans-generational cultural identity. But I'd never consider someone a "traitor" or disown them for "deserting" said community as some would. That's just silly.