The Term “African American”

For the longest time the term African American has made no sense to me in the sense of it being a race.   While the term race can be a moving target when it comes to a definition, though for the sake of argument I will go with wikipedia’s simple enough definition: The term race or racial group usually refers to the categorization of humans into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics.

Heritable means passed on genetically regardless of where one may be born.

African-Americans must then have some sort of unique or at least defining set characteristics that other black people do not if African-Americans are their own race.  And if that is thruthful, then what should someone who is from Nigeria call themselves when they come here since they do not have any ‘American’ element related to African American, only African.   If Lennox Lewis boxed in Atlantic City, New Jersey, what race would he select when filling out an IRS tax form?  He is not African American because he was born in England to Jamaican parents.  He also boxed for the Canadian teams in 1984 and 1988… While Canada is on the North American continent, the term African American does not apply to blacks from that country.

Earlier, African Americans were considered blacks, negros, and colored.  For example, there is the United Negro College Fund, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congressional Black Caucus, and so on…  all of which were named by the the same group of people now calling themselves African Americans.  This is not a race, but a social club.

Rather than trying to keep on changing the name of the same racial group of people, shouldn’t time be spent on more important issues such as crime rates, levels of incarceration, single parent homes, substance abuse, and the many other factors facing blacks in America today?  Changing the name will not make the problems go away — real action may help.

The term “African American” does not define a race — only a social club where people like Lennox Lewis, nor an immigrant from Nigeria could belong – despite having many of the same various sets of heritable characteristics.