I've always referred to black people as black. Should I change that up and start referring to African American people as African Americans?

Just now saw this. With the caveat that I'm 61 and hardly in touch with today's generation's sensibilities, it seems that in print, the preferred nomenclature is now Black - capital B. Personally, as long as the person is saying it respectably, anything outside obvious slights are acceptable.

I guess in my life we've gone from colored people to Afro-Americans to blacks to African Americans back to Blacks. And I've left out persons of color - which now fits the broad category of multiracial Americans of many ethnicities.

Personally, I only use racial terms when absolutely necessary to differentiate how we commonly analyze and talk about the immediate physical identification of individuals as members of social group. As you've undoubtedly seen me argue, race is a created construct that cannot be quantified biologically - ie, what percentage of what blood lineage makes one this or that, and very few humans are 100% anything as the globe continues to shrink.

It's kinda funny, but I read your Wikepedia link in the Yang thread, and a portion of the 'white privilege' introduction took great pains to note that many aspects of "racial" bias and language are actually based on class bias, and many transcend "race" into economic inequalities that fall not only on non-whites but poorer whites as well. IOW, as with life, it's complicated, and any intelligent discourse has to allow that any one person's opinion is just that.

#15

No, he's saying Black men should act more like WHITE MEN and if they do they'll receive the same treatment, have the same success, and identical opportunities - it is only their lack of all the preferable qualities that make WHITE MEN so successful which holds the entire race back. His stats tell him so. If only Blacks would make better choices everything would be fine. There are no systemic obstacles for Blacks to overcome in American society, they should simply mirror WHITES.

#14

Do you have a fecking clue why statistics such as those exist? Obviously you don't. It's no use with you. Unbelievable.

Seriously, GFY. I don't have the patience for you.

Why is it so hard for whites to acknowledge that whites conquered and ethnically cleansed the Western Hemisphere????

Manifest Destiny, another uniquely American province.

No I'm not. I'm sick and fucking tired of all you god-damned Nazi's calling everyone racist and backing it up with lies.

So that's what you got out of #9? GFY until your eyes bleed ignoramus. You can't have an intelligent conversation with a constipated moron who thinks the academic analysis and projection of historical facts are somehow lies when they repeatedly show the complete, unmistakable influence that race has had upon almost every facet of this nation's development and progress since even before it was founded.

Howl at boogeymen little man. Howl away.

Don't be so ignorantly transparent. Stevie Wonder can see what you're trying to do, ie, intentionally tout a meaningless number to minimize the millions of Africans and their progeny affected by slavery in America.

Just stop, please. Take the hood off and recognize your own racial bias and inherent need to downplay the significance that racial disparity has always played in America and continues to play to this day. That doesn't mean that any single non-Black American individual should be compelled to feel "guilt" for this reality. Simple recognition of intentional systemic racism within the American historical construct is a good place to start meaningful discourse on how to remedy the baked-in problems. But trying to falsely claim terms were invented 4 decades after they were used is the vestige of a moron. It doesn't matter when words or terms came into use. The issue is the policy, not the language.

#52

The ignorance and arrogance just drips off of you with most every post.