Certainly there are Afro-Venezuelans and Afro-Colombians. Don't we all know that these things are socially, culturally, and politically determined, and evolve over time, partly as a result of social struggle?
The term "colored" is today considered a throwback racist term in American discourse. Yet the nation's foremost civil rights organization - a mass organization with real chapters - is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, reflecting its history. And we also have "people of color," which is considered a progressive term, which refers to people who are not "white." Generally, Arab Americans are considered "people of color" on the left in the U.S., although "racially" most Arabs in the U.S. are "white," like most American Jews. So the purpose of the term is clearly to capture something else besides skin color. The "enlightened" way to refer to "black people" in the U.S. has evolved over time and has been a "site of contestation." "African-American" is a relatively recent innovation (in terms of U.S. history) that was driven by progressive motivations: in particular, that "black people" in the U.S. shouldn't identify and be identified by their skin color but by their social, cultural, and political history, like other U.S. ethnic groups and also that they should embrace and affirm that history and in particular their ties to Africa. I think this was a very positive development. In particular, a key reason that U.S. foreign policy in Africa and the Caribbean isn't worse than it is, is that African-Americans have been engaged in trying to improve it. Note that we still have the "Congressional Black Caucus" and "Black History Month" (although, also, "African American History Month.") On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 9:54 AM, ken hanly <[email protected]> wrote: > Are the similar terms to Afro-American in other countries? Are there > Afro-Mexicans.Afro-Brazilians, Afro-French. I would consider an > Afro-Canadian to be a Canadian with a weird hairdo. > > Cheers, ken > > Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html > Blog: http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
