Is the term African-American offensive to you?

I have several black friends, I don’t use the term African American when I refer to them, I call them Greg, Adrian and Delores because that’s their names.

Some people are tasked to describe race or so-called culture of a person as a function of their job - I know I have to occasionally - and I have actually had my seventh graders make weird noises when I described a person as "black." Racial issues rear angry heads frequently. Today, my class read a story by a Chinese author which included stereotypes of bad driving and anti-American views by Chinese characters - and although I gave great effort to attach these feelings to other unfair stereotypes that are perpetrated against other ethnicities and BY other ethnicities - I still got the racially-motivated "noises".... It's really maddening to address racism and "approved" monikers - and these "noises" that really exemplify racism.

I just remembered a clarifying incident that happened last year. I described the Mexican flag as the Mexican flag, and many of my students made wooooo noises. One of my students acted as though "Mexican" was a personal insult, and said, "I'm not Mexican; I'm from San Salvador!" I said, "but I'm talking about Mexico's flag. There's no other way to describe it." They took my mention of the word Mexico as an insult because it's become a hot word in the social dialogue. I think this speaks to the point of hot words...like the initial poster implies.

So, to answer: the term African-American is not offensive to me at all - but it requires knowledge I don't have. Some white people are African-American. If I'm not talking about Americans who I know originated in Africa, I won't use it.

Your student is an idiot.

To be fair, he's been conditioned by the liberal media, but he's still an idiot.

I would never hesitate to say Mexican in reference to the national flag. Same in regard to someone I know to be from Mexico. Maybe the student from El Salvador wants the Mexican flag to be called the Salvadoran flag, but he ain't going to get it.

I sympathize with you on that, Lash.

I think.

Noises derive from both sides, are reactionary

This may be off base, what's new, but I think your task is pricking empathy to wake up.

No advice right now.

" people will try to rip the over off it"

"You might not be aware of your own programming"

What do these sentence mean?

I don't know why you're addressing me in particular. This member has not described herself as being in your position. It is possible for one to go from one day to the next, year in and year out, for a very long time without being confronted by the issue of race or ethnicity. Olivia Chow is contemplating a run for mayor of Toronto. How does one describe her? She's a Canadian.

Yes, she IS Canadian, but if you were asked what her ethnicity was, you would say "Asian-Canadian" or "Chinese-Canadian", would you not?

Re: ehBeth's comment, I'd only specify race for identification purposes. Otherwise, they are Canadian, American, British, etc.

I once called police about a black guy who was running from police on the street. I told them he was a black dude, what he was wearing and where he was hiding. I said 'black' because he WAS black - do we even have a term for black Canadians? Is it African-Canadian? Not that I'd use that term - and if I were in the States reporting the same thing, I'd say 'black' as well.

I don't know what it is about these (PC) terms these days - African-American, Native American, Aboriginal, First Nations - why they keep changing. Didn't 'black' used to be preferable at one point? Would a black person really get offended if you said he was 'black'? And what was wrong with the word 'Negro'? Obviously I am out of the loop, and have been for some time.

I do know in Vancouver, there aren't many 'black' people, but there are many Indians (as in East Indians). The ones I've spoken to about this prefer Indian to East Indian, but they don't care all that much. I went to S. America last year with Ms. Mallal, an Indian friend of mine, and we had a great long chat about this on the plane.

Well, I guess that would depend on the person you're speaking with, and if they were anally PC about it.

I think it's just a easy way of saying nigger ... here in Australia when we took Australia away from the original owners, we the conquerors ended up calling the the original owners Abos ( aboriginals ) we herded them into camps away from the whites, but we don't use the easy color description of the USA
as it would mean calling them native Australian's and everybody would know they were black... we now call them Australians, funny enough it still didn't turn them white or give them their country back.

But my point is, why would her ethnicity come up? What difference does it make in any matter of importance?

If dum-dum doesn't understand, I can explain it to you in a way that you'll understand. For some people, they place a value in racial-ethnic backgrounds which is somewhat relevant to their identities, albeit the personal qualities and talents which are more central in characterizing themself.

Well, you wouldn't unless you need to. I was agreeing with you.

Yeah, i know. I don't know if you're familiar with the author of this thread, but basically, she thinks of herself as a troll and is proud of it. She said as much this morning. I will no longer be wasting my time on her.

cicibebe is apparently male

http://able2know.org/topic/205010-1#post-5213525

She is? I think you're just trying to distance yourself from her.

Cis, in posting #….031, ……… says, "…..she thinks of herself as a troll….." Is that so

I think of myself as one also (not so much as a conscious motive but as a perhaps unfortunate personality trait). However OT, I'd very much like to hear from you on the subject, perhaps in a new thread

I just put the twit on Ignore. What an idiot.

This is, of course, conjecture. I think we have a bright young person who for whatever reasons was rather isolated as a teen and was socially shy. I can relate to this.

While in the midst of that, he or she resented all sorts of other people and tended to put them into clumps.
I can relate to this too, when I was fourteen, but not the clumping.

He or she is isolated, is reacting by internet. Me, I was lucky to get a job and interested in lots of new people, some rather amazing to me in many ways. It brought me out of myself, and major twitness. I almost immediately got less resentful.

I think the person has come to not like his own cultural background (oh, think hippies), and moved via parents to another country where he doesn't like them either, not least because they ignore him. So, effectively, he doesn't like anyone, and is reaching out aggressively.