Did blacks or whites come up with the term "African Americans"?

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It's a stupid and divisive term. Jesse Jackson was one of the first people to start using the term publicly in 1988 when he was still all tangled up in politics. 1988 was also when the whole country jumped on the Political Correctness bandwagon. After Jesse said it, the term "african-american" became a favorite media expression (and you know that white people own and run the media) and they ran with it during the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 and also when discussing General Powell during the first Iraq war. Apparently, the media felt that the word "black" wasn't "correct enough" to use in referring to black republicans. Point is, Jesse Jackson (a black man) may have started the whole thing, and you know what a race-bating attention-whore he is, but, as with most things, it all comes down to media spin and what gets the most attention or causes the most controversy. By hyphenating an ethnicity in front of -American, it serves to separate that group of people out of the mainstream in everyones' minds. Wereas just saying "black" makes most people think Black and American (as opposed to specifially African)....Show more

African Americans came up with the term. I personally don't mind the term Black American. I guess "Blacks" alone was too general because there are Black people all over the world, so they decided to differentiate the different Black groups. Black American would have been better than African American, but then again Black is a color, and they wanted the term to be associated with a place. Other ethnic groups are lucky to know EXACTLY where their from. All Black Americans know for the most part is America, it's obviously not our fault, but it still sucks.

Good Luck with your debate!...Show more

I hate that term, and all like it. My friend is an African American, except he's a white guy that was born in South Africa and immigrated to the United States. His family has lived in Africa for several generations, over 100 years.

Egyptians live on the African continent, but they're Mediterranean, not "black".

Australlian Aboriginies are "black", if they move to the US, does that make them African Americans? What about black people from any other continent?

Are we the only country that does this, or are there African Canadians up north?

My ancestors came out of Africa...several millions years ago, so I must be an African American too!

Basically, it's "politically correct" crap.

If you want to be technically and scientifically correct, Africans are negroids, Asians, are mongoloids, and Europeans are caucasoids....Show more

I do believe it was part of the civil right movement originally; a term adopted by the blacks. Google "etymology of African American" and you'll get sources.


The term entered into usage largely starting in 1988, when the Rev. Jesse Jackson held a news conference to urge Americans to use it to refer to blacks. African American has largely supplanted black in health matters. For example, "Breast cancer tumors in African-American women are more aggressive than tumors in white women."

The term has been a subject of debate, in part because it is ambiguous. It might be limited to Africans who have immigrated to America or to people born to one African and one American parent. Some have argued that the term African American should refer only to the descendents of slaves brought from Africa to America.

From a scientific viewpoint, the term African-American makes absolutely no sense. Most genetic evidence now supports an African origin for all humans on earth. Thus, everyone living in the Americas today is, properly speaking, African American.

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=38705...Show more

In 1982, Justice Blackmun Was the First to Use the Term "African American" For the next quarter-century, the word "*****" was slowly replaced by the word. Prior to the term African American, a shortened version, Afro-American, was briefly in vogue. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1077-3711(199722)16%3C12%3ATEOTT%22%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E

It was largely popularized by Jesse Jackson, and quickly adopted by major media outlets. Many blacks in America expressed a preference for the term as it was formed in the same way as the names for other ethnic groups. Some argued further that, because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the U.S. under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker.

Harry Andrew Blackmun, credited with coinage of the term African-American (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) , was a Republican and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994. He is best known as the author of the majority opinion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, overturning laws restricting abortion in the United States and declaring abortion protected under a constitutional right to privacy.

Edit:
Forgot part of your question....Blackmun was caucasian....Show more