An Essay On What They Call Us Page 4

include persons of African ancestry in America, who were the descendants of African slaves. Circa 1986, there were communities and leaders who began to use the term, “African American.” But it was not until 1988 during the Democratic Presidential primaries that then candidate Jesse Jackson publicly identified Blacks as “African American.” Soon after, the news media and other institutions eagerly embraced the term and began using it to denote “Blacks in America.” “African American,” after all, was less a militant term, since it did not connote race as much as it did heritage. It was racially neutral.

  The government of the United States of America defines “African Americans” as “having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa,” but the definition is vague. Would such a definition include the Creoles? Would it include the Hispanic “non-Blacks” with black skin and/or African heritage, or recent immigrants from Africa? Beyond that, anthropologists and genetic researchers have confirmed the entire human race originated in Africa and that the first humans had black skin. Logically, that would make every American and African American.

  The U.S. Census Bureau makes a more clear distinction. Maintaining the Office of Management and Budget’s guidelines, the Census Bureau defines “African Americans” as “black people born in the United States.”

  DEFINITION OF BLACK OR AFRICAN AMERICAN

  USED IN THE 2010 CENSUS

  According to OMB, “Black or African American” refers to a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.

  The Black racial category includes people who marked the “Black, African Am., or Negro” checkbox. It also includes respondents who reported entries such as African American; Sub-Saharan African entries, such as Kenyan and Nigerian; and Afro-Caribbean entries, such as Haitian and Jamaican.*