Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Confession

Ben has to write a report about a famous African American.

I'm trying to convince him to do it on Charlize Theron.

I know his teacher would laugh, but the principal might get pretty upset.



Charlize Theron. Born in South Africa, 1975. Became a U.S. Citizen, 2007


I'm trying to restrain a rant on my dislike of the term African American unless you are a first or second generation African.

Maybe I should start insisting that I be called a Canadian/Scottish American, and that it's offensive to me to be called otherwise.

My favorite was when we lived in Germany and other Americans there would refer to black Germans as African Americans.

O.K. Let the "You're a racist/bigot/ignorant biotch" comments commence.

P.S. Don't even get me started on the term Caucasian. You know who are really Caucasian? Iranians. Armenians. Turks. Those are the people who live in the Caucus Mountain region. Not whiteys from Maine.

7 comments:

  1. Dang it! Our book club last night was on African American Heritage month. Why didn't I think to bring a People magazine with Charlize Theron on the cover.

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  2. I'm with you on the whole African American thing. Totally annoying. My friend from South Africa laughs every time some idiot calls a black in SA an African American. So absurd.

    I insist on being called a Peruvian-German-Irish-Pirate-?-American. All of it.

    What I actually do on forms is to fill in all the blocks if they don't give me a space for other.

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  3. I refuse to use the term. I just say black and white and leave it at that. Whatever happened to "Black Power?"

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  4. I am so with you on this. I have a very white friend who immigrated from South America when he was 16. What does he check on all his forms? African/American. This has caused all sorts of problems and he got beat up a few times in school. Besides that, I am 1/64 (5 generations back-you do the math) Navajo. Can I claim it? No, so why do people from African decent claim it as if their tie to Africa wasn't 200 years old?! Don't ask my family about "Indian Reservations" either....

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  5. I think the term African American is for the people who are afraid to say 'black'. Black Black Black. I don't know too many black people who refer to themselves as African American. Actually, I can't think of any. We call ourselves black.

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  6. ug. Don't get me started as well...

    Why won't the Principal like it? Is the Principal Black?

    My pet peeve is the way people who are Black can be as racists as they want and no one can say a thing or we are either being discriminate, racist, bigots, politically incorrect, or insensitive. ??? What-ever!

    I had a TON of friends who were Black growing up and they were just fine being called "friends who are black." But when you have to identify them, they also didn't mind being called Black. Is just a distinguishable thing. Not racist. As long as I put that they were friends first. A PERSON who is Black, a friend who is black, not a black person. Make sense?

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  7. One of my son's best friends, who recently passed away considered himself one of my children- he referred to himself as my black son. My son referred to Adam's mom as his black mom. Probably because they were all born in the US and not naturalized citizens who had immigrated here from Africa. Just North Carolina.

    As for the forms- I indicate 'human' for race- and that really caused me a problem when Forrest and I got married in SC. They just could not understand it.

    ReplyDelete

Be nice or I'll punch you in the taco.

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