Friday 7 December 2012

In Which I Point Out That Political Correctness Can Be Politically Incorrect

Right. Racism. In Britain, someone who is black and British would be classified as black British, and in the U.S, a black American would be classified as African-American. So far, so alliterative. But isn't this second term a bit... silly? Certainly if you trace the genealogy of a black American, you'll get to a point when their ancestors lived in Africa, but isn't that true of everyone? Conventional wisdom is that homo sapiens originated in Africa, and then some migrated. Now let's assume that you have an Arab who's from Egypt, and a white South African. If they become American citizens, and go to, say, Harlem, and start telling one and all that they are African-Americans, they'd get a bit of stick for it, to put it mildly. But aren't they just as much African-Americans as people whose roots are in Cameroon or Senegal? This Afro-American terminology just enforces the idea in American minds that all Africans are black. That's an ignorant and somewhat racist view. Why don't they call all the white people European-Americans? 

No comments:

Post a Comment