Sunday, February 19, 2012

"African American" or "Black"

In a January 2011 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 42% of respondents said they preferred to be called black, 35% said African American and 13% said it doesn't make any difference, and 7% chose "some other term"

The article went on to say that this younger generation of people preferred to be called "black" instead of "african american" because of many reasons.  1) "african american" sort of screams this political correctedness 2) or it is a word that people who aren't black use to describe black people 3) it is a political tool.  In a Senate race against Obama in 2004, Alan Keyes implied that Obama could not clam to share Keyes' "African American heritage" because Keyes' ancestors were slaves.  During the Democratic presidential primary, some Hilary Rodham Clinton supporters made the same charge.  Last year, Herman Cain, then a Republican presidential candidate sought to contrast his roots in the Jim Crow south with Obama's history and he shunned the label African American in favor of "American black conservative."  Then there are some white Americans who were born in Africa.  Paulo Seriodo is a U.S. citizen born in Mozambique to parents from Portugal.  In 2009, he filed a law suit against his medical school, which he said suspended him after a dispute with black classmates over whether Seriodo could call himself African American.  "It does not matter if I'm from Africa and they are not" wrote Seriodo at the time. "They are not allowing me to be African American!"  And so, the saga of the name continues.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

overheard on the bus

So, just a quick post about what happened on the bus today I though you'd all find interesting.  I was riding the 38 Geary bus--for those of you who don't know, the bus goes from Ocean Beach to downtown.  It goes through my neighborhood which is primarily Asian and Russian.  I get on and this attractive, older (maybe in his 50s or 60s?) well dressed, African American man was talking on the phone.  The bus was packed so I was standing right next to him.  I could not help overhearing his conversation.  Now, I could only hear his side of it.  But he was talking about race being a more challenging issue than gender. And what he said next really caught my attention--he said something to the effect "When I am behind a white woman, I make sure when I pass her I go out of my way to go by her, into the street and around her, so she knows I am not going to attack her.  I watch her looking in business windows and looking behind her to see where I am."  This is his reality. Here is my question--is this yours?  When I walk behind someone as a white woman,  I am not threatening to them,  I don't have to change where or how I walk.  If I had an African American son, his reality would be different.  It would be my job to help him live and navigate in his reality.  What is your responsibility for your child who is of a different race?