Dear Sticky Wicket,
I am curious about the definition of “African-American.” Is a white person that was born in Egypt, or another country on the African continent, but now is a U.S. citizen, classified as African-American? Is a black person from Jamaica, but now a U.S. citizen, classified as African-American?
~John Steinke
Dear John,
Classifying blacks as “African-Americans” has been widely debated among politicians and journalists across the country. African-American, generally used to describe Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry, was popularized in the 1980s by Reverend Jesse Jackson. Jackson coined the phrase as a cultural identifier for blacks residing in America.
“Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical cultural basis,” Jackson said during a 1988 news conference. “African-Americans have hit that level of maturity.”
Since then, the term has been at the center of debates concerning affirmative action policies and cultural identity. In the Senate race against Barack Obama, Republican Alan Keyes questioned whether Obama could rightfully claim African-American status.
“My ancestors toiled in slavery in this country,” Keyes said. “My consciousness, who I am as a person, has been shaped by my struggle, deeply emotional and deeply painful, with the reality of that heritage.”
Speaking at a public forum at Princeton University in 2004, Henry Louis Gates estimated that more than two-thirds of all Harvard’s black students were the descendants of West Indians or Africans, and very few of Harvard’s black students were the descendants of American slaves.
What does this have to do with your question? Being classified as African-American is largely a matter of social identity, although geographical origin plays a part.
Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Sen. John Kerry and beneficiary of the Heinz family fortune, identifies herself as African-American.
“My roots are African,” says Heinz, who was born in Mozambique. “The birds I remember, the fruits I ate, the trees I climbed, they’re African.”
In a Saturday night skit with Tracy Morgan, Charlize Theron jokingly identified herself as African-American.
Morgan: You live here right, but you were born in Africa.
Theron: Yes, that’s right.
Morgan: So you’re an African-American?
Theron: Wow. I guess I am. I never thought of it that way. People always think I’m Swedish or German. But I’m African-American. You’re right.
“Arguments about the correct definition of racial identity are this century’s version of medieval scholastic theologians’ debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin,” says Stanford Law professor, Richard Thompson Ford. “Because nothing whatsoever depends on the answer to the latter inquiry, we’ve all quite reasonably stopped caring. I expect the angels will forgive us. And soon enough the nation’s blacks, whites, Latinos, Chicanos, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Orientals, Negroes, colored people, and African-Americans will thank us, if we stop caring about the terminology and definition of races and get on with the important work of fighting racism.”