Afro-American
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Afro-American is an alternative to the term African American, referring to an American of African ancestry. It also can be used as an umbrella term to refer to all descendants of Africans slaves to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade. The term had gained currency by 1890 but was surpassed by other terms, such as "colored". It returned to general usage in the 1960s and 1970s. Its former prominence can still be seen in several pop culture terms.
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Word origin
Of all the peoples who migrated to the present-day United States after European discovery, those whose ancestors came from Africa against their will have had the longest and most difficult struggle for recognition of their rights as citizens and their dignity as humans. In all likelihood, they have also been called (and have called themselves) by more different names than any other American group in their search for respectful terminology.
When first brought here from Africa in the 1600s, they were naturally called Africans, an ancient word in English that came ultimately from the Romans. The African slaves were also called Negroes, a word borrowed from the slave trading Portuguese in the 1500s and known in North America by the mid 1600s. This led to a variant pronunciation spelled Niger or nigger, at first neutral in connotation but gradually becoming more derogatory. Also in use before the end of the seventeenth century was the simple descriptive black.
By the end of the eighteenth century, with the emergence of a small but growing community of freed slaves and the start of the Abolition (1787) movement, black Americans began to seek new ways of referring to themselves—ways that would shake off the oppression of the past and command respect. African was the early preference, reflected in the name of the Sons of the African Society founded in Boston in 1798. But colored people also began to be used then, a term that met with such favor that it was the choice of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People when it was founded more than a century later.
In the year 1890, Afro-American was the term of choice in the African-American publication Advance, which advocated "obtaining for the Afro-American an equal chance."
The twentieth century saw a succession of preferred terms, from colored to Negro to Black and then, with increasing emphasis on heritage rather than color, to Afro-American and African American, the latter widely adopted after a speech by the Reverend Jesse Jackson in 1988. In the 1960s and 1970s, Afro-American was prominent along with related terms such as Afro-American studies (1970), Afroism (1971), the hair style known as the Afro (1968), and music known as Afro-beat (1974) and Afro-rock (1977).
During American colonial and early national times, black slaves and freemen alike were often referred to as Africans, even after several generations’ residence in America. That this practice was common among blacks as well as whites is obvious from the number of churches and institutions founded during this period with names such as the African Methodist Episcopal church and the Free African Society. However, this usage fell out of favor in the 19th century, and it was not until the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s that black Americans’ African heritage was again acknowledged in popular terminology. Afro-American, which gained rapid acceptance alongside black during this period, expressed a growing, sometimes defiant pride in black American culture and its African origins. Afro hairstyles and African dress became popular in many parts of the black community, while Afro-American studies programs proliferated on university campuses.
But in the following decades Afro-American lost some of its popularity, especially in referring to people, so that today a phrase such as the election of two new Afro-Americans to Congress sounds somewhat dated. To a large degree its place has been taken by the similar term African American, popularized in the late 1980s by Jesse Jackson and other black leaders and quickly adopted by many columnists and commentators, black and white alike. African American has the virtue of conforming to the standard model of ethnic American names such as Asian American, Irish American, and Italian American. It is most appropriately used by outsiders in public discourse, as in articles, broadcasts, and speeches, where it communicates respect by emphasizing ethnicity over race. It has the further advantage that, unlike black, its use as a noun in referring to a particular person or persons is unproblematic; you can say My teacher is an African American where you probably would not say My teacher is a black. But there is little indication that African American is poised to push black aside as that term earlier pushed aside Negro. Indeed, recent surveys among black Americans, while confirming widespread acceptance of African American, indicate a strong continued preference for black.
See also
The term Afro-American can refer to:
- African Americans
- Other people of African descent in the United States
- Other people of African slave descent anywhere in the Americas.
- The Baltimore Afro-American, a local newspaper
- Afro Americans in the Americas
- Foreign-born Afro Americans
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