Africa is a continent. This is the reason why it doesn't make sense for Americans, who have a recent and direct connection to one of the many countries in Africa, to claim African American. Their ties to their country of origin was never severed.
What's the Difference Between Black and African Americans? Genealogy and History of Black Americans
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IllmaticDelta
Veteran
no...afroamerican is a term coined by USA-slave descendants. African from africa are contintenl-africans and should be indentified with their mother nation (nigerian-ghanian-ethiopian-American)
black american is a racial term form USA-slave descendants considering they are the one who coined the term "Black" as we used it today. Continental sub-saharan african's can be "black africans"
BoogieDown23
MY SON HAS COOKIES!
In the early days to the USA many of the slaves still knew what ethnic groups that belonged too, so why would they refer to themselves as African Americans? Don't forget that most slaves didn't even come to the USA until the 1700's, so many of the slaves were still aware that they were Mandingos, Fulani, Wollof, etc. White people certainly didn't call any slaves African Americans, because nikkas didn't rate that in White people minds; not only that but the USA was not even the United States of America until 1776.
People like WEB Dubois and Marcus Garvey may have been kicking around the idea of Black, Afro-American etc. in the early 1900's, but the idea seems to have gained it greatest traction in the 1960's and later with the advancement of more groups in the Civil Rights era.
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I totally agree that it gained popularity and mass appeal in the civil rights era and after, but if you would check the links I provided you. There is documented evidence of the term being used in 1780s and beyond as well as its interchangeability with the word black.
I'm not trying to derail the thread or come at anyone. I'm just trying to engage in discourse.
The reason that it stuck out to me to be honest was the fact that in some of the convos I've had with UN and AU staff etc, I've frequently heard the term black american only when referring to descendants of the slave trade while I've heard african american and (country specific) american used in a pan Africanistic view ormore broad all encompassing reference to those with roots in africa but now in America. If there are other Africans reading this, I would like to hear their thoughts.
As far as my original comment, since I haven't really had anyone address or even dispute the links I provided, we can agree to disagree and just table it so as not to throw the topic off course.
I don't know who you have spoken to at the UN or AU, but I have never heard of anyone being referred to as an African American; except black people that are descended from the people enslaved in the USA. The only other Black people that I have seen the phrase applied to was people from the Caribbean that were living in the USA and African immigrant children that were born in the USA (like Barack Obama).
I think that foreign Black and White people may be confused by that phrase, but American born Black and White people know exactly what group that phrase in reference too.
cant leave a cac to do nothing rightJust looked at it....solid but somein there too. Dude said Gullah's were afro-bahamians
BlackManLiveFromLondon
New God
Not saying you need to go and practice the customs of said culture, lifestyle and language etc .. but I do think every AA should know roughly where they came from
Pit Bull
GATOR
My great grandmother had a child named Jammor that died young in the 1920s. I'm guessing it was Jamar but the census cacs back then spelled it wrong.
You think that might be a remnant of the Islamic culture that our ancestors brought over here? I doubt nikkas knew much of shyt about sand cacs back then to be influenced by them in any way.
I always thought those names came from the crack era until I researched the ancestry a little.
You think that might be a remnant of the Islamic culture that our ancestors brought over here? I doubt nikkas knew much of shyt about sand cacs back then to be influenced by them in any way.
I always thought those names came from the crack era until I researched the ancestry a little.
We already presented you with updated numbers showing you who African Americans are descended from and what groups presented the largest gene pools to African Americans. So some White dude making a video about where he thinks African Americans are from does not change the numbers that slave records and DNA supports.
Secondly, he misconstrued what African American meant. African American is a term that derived from Afro American, which arose during the Civil Rights era. That phrase is specifically associated with Black Americans; and not all Black people from everywhere else. Initially Civil Rights activists like, Malcolm X, pointed out that Black, Colored, Negro and all that other shyt did not indicate a place nor the ethnic origins of Black Americans. Since Black Americans are mixed with so many different African ethnic groups; Malcolm X and others reasoned Afro American was a better descriptor than Black, however Afro American never caught on; but African American eventually did.
Other speculation from him was the number of slaves that were Muslim. He put the number at 20%; while many better researched writers have put the number easily at 33 1/3% or even greater, because it is generally believed that 50% of the slaves brought to the USA were from areas that had heavy Muslim populations. Islam obviously had to exist in large number in the USA among African American slaves, because the remnants of Islam still exist in African American churches until this very day.
Fwiw, the Muslims that came to the USA from Africa were overwhelmingly from Senegambia. While there were Muslim slaves brought in from over groups like the Hausa from Northern Nigeria; it is not even contested that the overwhelming majority of the Muslim slaves that came to the USA were Mandingos, Fulani and Wollof, which stemmed from wars in Futa Tooro and Fouta Djallon, as well as in the modern countries of Mali, Gambia, Guinea-Conakry/Bissau, Senegal, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. The slave owners themselves knew who they where trying to purchase, because they specifically wanted to purchase people from the Rice Coast who were experts at growing rice and indigo. The slaves themselves said who they were, because they brought the stuff like the Blues; as well as skills at growing rice, indigo and knowledge of horses, cattle and blacksmithing. In fact I think the phrase cowboy may be due to the Fulani slaves that were brought to the USA, because the Fulani were experts at handling cattle.
Other proof of who the slaves were involved the dishes like Gumbo, Jumbalya and Hoppin John which are offshoots of Jollof Rice which is from the Wollof people of Senegal. Those dishes were made everywhere by the slaves, including in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia all the way to Louisiana.
In conclusion you have already been advised that the vast majority of Nigerians were taken to the Caribbean and South America (specifically Brazil). Quite a few Nigerians came to the USA as slaves from plantations in the Caribbean after the USA banned the importation of slaves directly from Africa into the USA in 1807. That time period ties into the Fulani Jihads into Yorubaland starting in 1804, which resulted in the capture and enslavement a lot of Yoruba people who were transported as slaves to the Caribbean. The King of Dahomey also enslaved a large number of Yoruba people that were shipped to Americas.
There are lots of sources that prove what we have stated. No one is denying that African American have some Nigerian admixture, but by and large African Americans are descended from the people in and around Senegambia and from the people of Central Africa (Kongo, Angolan, Cameroon).
Your claim about the Yoruba Muslims was kind of funny, because the place that they had the greatest impact was not in the USA, but it was in Brazil. There is an excellent book called the Servants of Allah by Sylvaine Diouf where she documents Muslim slaves in the Americas. In a section of the book she documents the Male revolt in Bahia Brazil. The revolt was called the Male (Mali) revolt, but the Muslims in the revolt were mostly Yoruba people from the modern countries of Benin and Nigeria. That is further proof of where most Nigerians were take during the slave trade. I also included another article called "Slavery and Abolition in Brazil."
http://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/brazil/papers/reis-paper.pdf
Malê revolt - Wikipedia
The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection | The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/15/world/black-cowboys/index.html
Islam in the United States - Wikipedia
I got a great idea. Lets.......
My great grandmother had a child named Jammor that died young in the 1920s. I'm guessing it was Jamar but the census cacs back then spelled it wrong.
You think that might be a remnant of the Islamic culture that our ancestors brought over here? I doubt nikkas knew much of shyt about sand cacs back then to be influenced by them in any way.
I always thought those names came from the crack era until I researched the ancestry a little.
There are a bunch of names that survived, but they probably got corrupted or more likely anglicized over time. Names like Malick (Malik), Lamin, Musa (Moses), Sulayman (Solomon), Binta, Kati, Wandi or Wandy.
Here is a decent little write up African Muslims in early America. The oddest part is that many slave owners and politicians of that era knew that many of the slaves were Muslim. It is the current people that seem to be unaware of it.
African Muslims in Early America
A lot of American culture is actually African though. Stuff like southern cooking and almost all of the music in this country was developed by the Africans who were enslaved here. The Mandingos impact on the USA has been huge.
Project MUSE - Bound to Africa: the Mandinka Legacy in the New World
My great grandmother had a child named Jammor that died young in the 1920s. I'm guessing it was Jamar but the census cacs back then spelled it wrong.
You think that might be a remnant of the Islamic culture that our ancestors brought over here? I doubt nikkas knew much of shyt about sand cacs back then to be influenced by them in any way.
I always thought those names came from the crack era until I researched the ancestry a little.
Man I've reached the point where I believe just about anything of unexplained or mythical origin, whether it be a name, nickname, custom, etc. that is either very common with AA's or at least is common in the south is of African origin, its just a matter of connecting the dots.
There's definitely a possibility of a connection. I say that cause I have a similar occurrence in my fam, I know it's not necessarily common but I am curious how many names managed to survive into the 20th century.