so, yesterday in class my caucasian classmate asked me why i disliked the label black, but i was okay with african-american. it's not a love-hate relationship. i do dislike the label black, but i'm not completely in love with the label african-american.

african-american is simply the best descriptor available at this time. while it would be nice to live in a world where that didn't matter, it's not going to happen in my lifetime. so, while we're using these labels, i prefer african-american.

why don't i like black? because i'm not. i'm not more black than a white person is white. black is also associated with negativity and evil. a little white lie, the black sheep of the family, etc.

i really should work on starting a more appropriate term.


This entry was posted on Sunday, March 06, 2005 and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 lovely comments:

    mrcrazyone said...

    I like the way African American rolls off the tongue. It is more time consuming and causes one to acknowledge our heritage.

  1. ... on Monday, March 07, 2005