I can state with unequivocal certainty that no person or group has the right to determine how other people define or call themselves or how they wish to be called, and you are certainly no exception. Although you obviously have no say in the matter, I am writing, in the interests of promoting a sense of community and mutual understanding, to clarify a few points regarding your post.
First, I believe that you may be laboring under a misconception as to the provenance of the term "African-American". Whatever your feelings about Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton (and I will not discuss that here), you may be certain that the term neither originates with or owes its current use to either of these two gentlemen. You may go back over two centuries to gentlemen like Prince Hall, to the 19th century Martin Delany, and to numerous luminary figures and movements throughout the African-American sojourn on this continent. Identification with the ancestral homeland of Africa has always been a powerful current in the social, cultural and intellectual development of "Black" America, and the largest organization of "Black" people ever built in the modern era was Marcus Garvey's UNIA, whose entire philosophy was rooted in identification with the African continent. As such, leave Al and Jesse out of this--this issue is bigger than any of them, or any of us.
To address your issue on its merits, I submit that your argument has no basis whatsoever, inasmuch as the term "African-American" explicitly affirms Americanness. I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that you can recall countless times that you have referred to people as Irish or Irish-American, or Asian or Asian-American; when in fact they may never have seen the land of their ancestral origin. The term African-American is no different. It simply denotes a particular population group within the American social and political fabric by its historical, cultural and ethnic background rather than on color or race.
In terms of the discourse among public intellectuals who often exert profound influence on public debate and usage, the term African-American, in fact, partly owes its current popularity to a paradigm which challenges the validity of a biological concept of "race". What does race mean as a biological concept in America, for example, when the vast majority of "blacks" have "white" ancestors and the majority of "whites" have "black" ancestors within the last 10 generations? (Yes, that is a fact! Look it up!) As such, terms such as African-American, European-American or Asian-American attepmt to denote various groups in our society on the basis of their group historical and cultural experience rather than on genotype, and it reaffirms that each group is, in fact, American. What is divisive about that? Does the sucess of democracy and equality depend on everyone being the same? Who would determine what that sameness should look like? Would you give up, for meager example, popcorn, the blues, pizza, barbecue, bagels and lox, and pilsner beer (all "American" favorites that are the product of particular ethnic groups) in pursuit of this sameness?
Rather than a melting pot, the better analogy for a multicultural America may be a pungent multi-ingredient stew or paella, in which each of the ingredients lend their own unique flavors to create a whole dish without being boiled down into a gelatinous indistiguishable mass. In the final analysis, ethnic divisiveness will not be resolved by eliminating and submlimating our differences, but by learning to accept and appreciate them. Good day to you sir!
Rudy Krigger, Jr.
A proud African-American
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