Something I realized the other day was our over-use of a term known as African-American. I have been so well trained in my upbringing to not use the term Black, but instead use the Politically Correct, African-American.
I'm not one to be PC, in fact I try not to. But I realized that this term is not a very good one to use. Mainly because it doesn't translate across our borders. Go north to Canada, you wouldn't call a Black man, African-American. You'd get a funny look and a Pro-Canadian spiel (and nobody wants that, trust me). So what do you use when referring to somebody outside our country who is of darker skin?
Again I go back to Black. People aren't really very black. It's more of a brown. We could go around calling people brownies, but something tells me we'd have a new N-word, only it would be called the B-word. Back in the day, people would call black people Negros. And this wasn't considered derogatory at all. In fact Black people embraced this term. It was used to identify a whole culture of people. Organizations were named using Negro in the title. But we don't use it hardly anymore. Why?
Simply put, I really think Negro is just too close to Nigger. And if I referred to a black man as Negro, he'd probably have some choice words to say to me. As he should, If I offend anyone, they should tell me. If I call a fellow white man a cracker and he draws offense, I should hear about it. However most crackers -er, white people wouldn't care.
So what's the deal? You're probably asking, "What's he going on about?" I am talking about the absurdity of the idea of offense and right. As well as a little P.C. B.S. And yes, being politically correct is some mad bullshit.
Our society has had a troubled past, in terms of race. We are finally getting over years of angst and turmoil. The black community has been unjustly treated in our past. And not our distant past Our relative recent history is littered with examples of black hatred. I use the term littered, however it is generally a few southern states that are the primary source of the problems.
The ancestry of of a Southern rebel is a bitch of a thing to cast aside. There was some great hurt in the south when they lost the civil war. According to them they were in the right. History and our society now views them as wrong, but at the time they were in the know and in the green. As far as they were concerned, the south needed slaves.
When they lost, they took all that hatred and resentment and had to put it somewhere, so it landed on the newly freed slaves. Thus the beginnings of the deeply divided racial lines in the American south. I'm not defending bigots, just trying to explore the origins of this stuff in modern day America.
OK, so then the Black community begins to speak up. They stop buses, hold marches, give dreamy speeches. They begin to say "No More!" And the rest of the country listened. It took a while, but eventually our society turned itself into one that was so fearful of hurting anybody's feelings that the notion of being politically correct began to emerge.
What is politically correct? Let's go to good ole webster:
Conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated.Hmmm. So basically, don't offend ANYONE. In this day and age, I find that impossible, but ok we'll go with it.
So you essentially have an entire race of people that have just gotten over their long history of abuse and hatred, add that to an overly sensitive nation of lightweights, and you get: a whole lot of absolute wasted energy at being polite, i.e. B.S.
So we get back to it. What exactly do we call the African-originating people of America. African-American sounds good, right? Sure, i suppose. I'd find it a little insulting if I were a black man. I'm sure there are more than a few people out there who resent the term. To me African-American is just wrong.
It is a term that categorizes an entire history of people into one thing. I would personally hate being pigeonholed into one category. In fact I do. I don' think of myself as white. Nor do I even consider myself and English American. I am simply, an American. Why does a term exist, in my opinion, to bring down a whole group of people to being African. It just doesn't make sense to me. Why would you want that?
I suppose if I were a betting man, that African-Americans like the term because it shows a unity of their race of people. That we are all deriving from Africa, the mother Continent. Add to it the fact that African American lineage is so muddied by years of slavery in the south, and you have no choice but to group everybody in the same category. I however find it to be a little dumb...
But I'm beginning to realize something even greater. The whole notion of black and white, is in itself racist. We should all just be people. We are Americans, or we are Canadians, or Europeans. Hell, we are Earthlings!!! Oh God, can you imagine the chaos in our non-offending, politically correct way of talking when the Vogons from the planet Vogsphere enter our society. And we wouldn't want to EVER offend them, because of course if we did, they could blow our whole planet away to make room for a new hyperspace expressway. (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference to the uninitiated)
Bottom line that I've been trying to get to in this all too long post is this: Drop the tip-toey non-offending speak, and look at people not as black/white/brown/purple but as people. Because that's what we are, and that is the ultimate solution to racism.
Sphere: Related Content
No comments:
Post a Comment