Still African-Americans really badly need to specify our ethnicity so we can have our own cultural and historic legacy that is unique to our own. This is why I value African-American over Black-American and the reason why I created this thread. By continuing to go only by "black", we only allow other blacks(no offense to those blacks) to come right in and lay claim to any African-American achievements. Which is why we keep getting these debates about whether or not Hip Hop was created by African-Americans or not.
But worse we get people saying stuff like this and it being championing as fact:
African American: Ask Me Anything....I Think...lol! - Culture - Nigeria
^^Those are posts by a member named Kails/MsDarkskin from Nairaland, she deactivated her account. She was a very cool person and me and her was cool back on Nairaland. But one thing that I didn't like about her views is that they were very "Caribbean-centric."
What she is essentially saying is that not only are African-Americans not homogenous, but that we all have different origins and some of those origins being outside of the USA and in the Caribbean. She also use to try and claim using faulty arguments that Gullah and Creoles don't have the same origins as "mainstream AAs" and that those two groups have origins more outside the USA; the Caribbean. We knows this is not true. She tried to use a study on Gullah and Jamaican DNA, but it doesn't say what she thinks it is saying. All it really said was that both Jamaicans and Gullahs in terms of distant plot closer to Sierra Leone, not that Gullahs are more related to Jamaicans or that Gullahs are FROM Jamaica. Plus a good number of people from South Carolina also have Sierra Leone ancestry. And we also know that the Gullah people and culture emerged in southern USA along with other AAs, but just that Gullahs compared to other AAs retained more of their early AA culture.
But that's besides the point, THESE are the type of talking points when we as AAs don't define our ethnicity and keep being afraid of the word "African" and using a racial term before "American. You have people sweeping right in making these types of statements. Back then I wasn't so well versed in African-American history or ethnogenesis so I really couldn't counter her claims. It wasn't even being influenced by creole named
@Supper and another poster named "RandomAfricanAM" that I became more versed in AA ethnogeneis.
But you get where I'm coming from. AAs going primarly by a racial term can backfire on us...
