Black or African American

The Technician's editorial asking whether students prefer the term "Black" or "African-American," this editorial started a debate among African American students on campus over how to label themselves and whether or not they wished to be labelled.

Perhaps the debate that revealed the deepest divisions among African Americans on campus was one started when the editors of The Technician asked readers to clarify whether they wanted to be identified in newspaper articles and editorials as “black” or “African American.” [1] In the ensuing weeks, multiple voices from the African-American community weighed in on the debate, revealing deep rifts in how students constructed problems of identity and racism.

Between March 20 and March 27, 1991, several students weighed in on the growing debate. Some students supported the use of the term “African American” as representing their historic roots in Africa.  In addition, these students noted that the use of color adjectives to describe race had historically been a way to denigrate minority groups in the United States.  These students prudently pointed out that since Asian Americans were not called “yellow people” and Indians were not called “red people,” African Americans should not be referred to as “black.”[2]  However, over students complicated these debates by pointing out that using the term “African American” implied African Americans’ marginalization and problematic identification as not quite American.  These students made impassioned claims that they were historically American and only recent immigrants from African can truly be called “African American.”[3]

These debates about name reflected an African American community that actually incorporated many groups that fit together uncomfortably under a larger umbrella.  While outwardly labeled as homogeneously black or African American, the community that The Technician was trying to describe actually included a multitude of communities of different economic classes and racial identities.  Some were recent immigrants to the United States from Africa, the Caribbean, or Central and South America.  Still others were of mixed-race identity, and many were of different political leanings.