Some discussion about the term African American on Reddit
Kriss Akabusi
This elusive interview was supposedly from the Commonwealth Games in Auckland 1990 (or maybe after Great Britain won the gold medal in the 4x400m relay at the World Championships in Tokyo in 1991):
This reminds me of a television interview I saw many years ago. A reporter from one of the major US television networks (I forget which one) was interviewing black British athlete Kriss Akabusi after being a member of the 400 metres relay team that took the gold medal at the 1991 Athletics World Championships. The interviewer started off with:
So, Kriss, what does this mean to you as an African-American?
I’m not American, I’m British.
Yes, but as a British African-American …
I’m not African. I’m not American. I’m British.
This went on for some time before the reporter got so flustered that she gave up and went to interview someone else. I guess more than anything else it demonstrates the potential absurdity of political correctness — this reporter was so tied-up with the idea that the “correct” term for someone of afro-caribbean ancestry was African-American and not Black that she couldn’t cope with the fact that many black people are neither African nor American.
Hello all,
I was interested in this story and the lack of Primary Sources. So much so that I emailed Kriss via his website and got confirmation that the story is indeed true and actually took place during the Commonwealth Games in 1990:
Hi Ted, Thank you for your interest. The said interview was during the Commonwealth games in Auckland 1990. Hope this helps? Kind regards,
🙂
Awooga!
— Kriss Akabusi
The Akabusi thing absolutely happened, I saw the vid on tv on a couple of occasions, and distinctly remember his face and also the insistance and utter non-comprehension of the interviewer. It is a classic. I have looked for it online to answer similar questions in the past and I cannot find it. It is from a long time ago, but has been on uk tv in the last few years, maybe 3. I find it VERY remarkable that it is not available to be found online anywhere. At least not with my google foo. And I really really tried.
I definitely saw this video online, but I can’t seem to find it? Strange.
In the sub chapter “conspiracy from large organizations” it seems easy to me to think that the large tv company in question probably had it [the footage of the Kriss Akabusi interview] nuked. i have no basis for this, except that things don’t disappear that way from the internet. It is becoming a legend on the web, but was on a funny tv prog in uk less than 36 months ago …
OK, now the rest …
I saw this EXACT exchange, but it was Seal, being interviewed on MTV in 1994, when his “Kiss from a Rose” went multi-mega-platinum or whatever it did to make a kajillion dollars.
It was a short interview, and I don’t remember who the MTV kid interviewer was; I remember it was a young lady. It may have been Kennedy.
I have no proof of this; can’t find any video, and Kennedy doesn’t mention it in her new book. I just remember it happened to be on the TV late at night, and I was thinking, “WOW that’s awkward - this American kid has no idea how to discuss race, and is trying to discuss race.”
The question was something like, “what’s it like being such a prominent African-American artist?” and Seal was very gently trying to tell her that he’s not American, nor is he African. “I’m British,” he kept saying. “No, I’m black, and I’m British..”
I was frankly in awe of his patience.
I remember watching the 2006 world cup during my senior year in math class. France was playing one of their bracket matches and my girlfriend at the time watches about 45 seconds of the game and says
Wow! France has a lot of African Americans on their team!
I didn’t even say anything. I was hoping the silence would give her time to let that comment sink in. It never did.
I’ve heard fellow Americans refer to Nelson Mandela as an African-American.
Shit’s insane.
… the principal of my prestigious high school referred to Nelson Mandela as African-American.
I think a lot of Americans genuinely haven’t contextualised the two words “African” and “American” in African-American. For them it’s simply a nicer way of saying “black”. Ergo, all black people worldwide are African-Americans as well.
It’s bizarre but apparently true.
I witnessed a similar situation in London. I was studying abroad and heading back to the dorm on a nightbus with my other classmates, all of us being from Florida. One girl in our group sits next to a black guy and being that she’s drunk she gets chatty. She asks the guy:
What is it like to be African-American in England?
I’m not African-American
Oh right, yeah, I mean African
I’m not African!
Then what are you???
I’m British!
African american is a fucking stupid and unnecessary euphemism. I used to have a coworker that was from South Africa. This is in Argentina, which, as much as the US likes to call themselves “America” and pretend the rest of the continent is not there, is “America” (that is, everyone in Argentina and other south american countries identify themselves as American, living in America, the continent). So, I always talked about him as “Afroamericano” (African-American). Then they met him, and realized the guy was whiter than cocaine. Technically correct is the best kind of correct.
This is just like when Chiwetel Ejiofor, at the Academy Awards, someone asked him what it feels like to be the first ever African American to be nominated as best actor.
This reminds me of when we read Athol Fugard’s play “Master Harold”…and the Boys in high school. To summarise, it is about race and class relations in apartheid era South Africa. My teacher lost his shit because everyone kept calling them African-Americans. An abiding memory is him nearly yelling,
They are ALL just AFRICAN.
Back in the eighties when we started using the term “African American” I had a friend in college who was from Kenya. He came up in conversation one day and someone asked me who I was talking about. I said: “you know so-and-so, the African guy.” A very politically correct friend told me my language was very incorrect and I should refer to him as African American. I said that he wasn’t American at all, he was from Kenya, Africa. Silence ensued while they digested this tidbit.
Me sister told me recently that she had a discussion about why black people in England are not called African Americans. It was with my seven year old niece…
This also happened to a Black Canadian hockey player. Can’t remember who though…
I remember reading a financial news article. The article talked about second quarter earnings being in the red for a company while 3rd quarter earnings were expected to be in the African-American. It was a a professional news source with proper journalists and everything. Pretty fucking sad. I know I facepalmed reading that.
My favorite was when I heard a white lady on the news refer to Nelson Mandela as ‘African-American’. No, honey, he’s just African.
one of my history teachers in high school once talked about “European African Americans”
My history teacher said Hitler discriminated against Jewish people, LGBTQ people, disabled people, and instead of black people she said African Americans… in Germany and countries around it, so many African Americans.
In my 9th grade French class one of my classmates saw a black person in our textbook and exclaimed,
They have African Americans in France??
🤦🏻♀️
I’m constantly called african American even though I’ve never stepped a foot in America.
My fourth grade students were reading a book set in Botswana. They kept referring to the characters as African American. I spent way too much time that day explaining that people from Africa are just African, and that it’s okay to say the word black.
I told a Colombian friend I was going to ask out a Spanish girl and he was like “oh nice, Latin American”…
I recall a TV announcer during the Olympics refer to the European black people as African Americans.
… during one of the Summer Olympics a few years back, one of the American announcers breathlessly declared that this was the first African American from X (where X is an African country) that has ever won this event.
I think they just universally substitute “African American” for “Black” in their mental dictionary and go from there. It’s actually quite racist in itself, when you think about it.
When Lewis Hamilton won the F1 championship a few years back the American press services replaced him being the first black world champion as being the first African-American world champion. They issued an apology the next day
I remember several years ago, before the Atlanta Thrashers had moved to Winnipeg, CNN kept referring to all the Black players on Atlanta as African-Americans even though only one was American. One was Swedish and the rest Canadian. Yet for whatever reason CNN insisted on referring to them as African-American.
Who is the richest African American? Elon Musk
Technically Charlise Theron is African American
Another “funny” point. White Americans originating from Africa also get chastised if they identify themselves as “African Americans”.
Read this: ‘White African-American’ Suing N.J. Med School for Discrimination - ABC News
Vanity Fair once published an article that said “Idris Elba would be the first African American James Bond if selected for the role.”
Had a boss once that was born and raised in Morocco.
He became a US citizen in his 40 and would tell everyone he was an African American. He looked like he was from Spain.
He loved correcting his employees who used the term wrong.
‘African American’ is a term that has been divorced from its linguistic underpinnings in the United States almost entirely as a result of the culture of political correctness that has, in some ways, muddled racial dialogue in popular culture.
‘African American’ was ushered into favor in popular culture on the belief that it lacked any of the negative, racist, and/or superficial characteristics of terms used in the past. It was widely adopted for these very reasons. But the term’s broad adoption is problematic because It designation as an appropriate term also had the effect of de-legitimizing other, more broad terms, rendering them implicitly racist or, at the very least, inappropriate. As a result of our society’s desire to overcome racism and to be racially sensitive and politically correct, the term has become a favored blanket term to describe anyone that is Black, regardless of nationality, which leads people who are trying to be racially sensitive and politically correct to make minor gaffs like this all the time.
Ideally, culture should, in part, look to the speaker’s intention when discerning whether a statement is racially offensive, rather than the word itself. This is not to say that the listener has no say in what is offensive - they certainly do, but a listener-centric system can have negative consequences on how we communicate. We allow for interpretive nuance in almost every other aspect of communication, but we are apprehensive to do the same when it comes to race. This is completely understandable given the history of race in the United States, but I can’t help but feel that this apprehension, while having a positive impact early on, has limited constructive dialogue. This stymieing effect is, in part, illustrated by Mr. Elba’s point.
I studied in London for a semester in college, and two of my (also American) flatmates once had a long conversation about differences between American African-Americans and English African-Americans. They were totally unaware they were describing English people as “-American”; It was clear that “African-American” was simply a word that meant “black” to them.
I’ve noticed Americans call all black people regardless of whether they’re not American or African or either an African American, and it really ruffles my feathers. I remember seeing someone refer to a British Jamaican as an African American a while ago, and it’s been playing on my mind ever since.
Blacks in America need to be called something.
The things they have been called have typically originated with those who are not black.
“African American” was popularized by Jesse Jackson during a period in which he was the leading black political figure in the US.
The term was picked up by the press, and there you go.
The term originated in this poem, which is based on word play involving the ends of both words, “ican”, which is re-styled as “I can”.
Whenever I hear the term I think of Jesse Jackson, who seems the type to discard a single syllable term in favor of a seven-syllable jaw-breaker.
Prevalence of the term has the amusing side-effect of causing Americans to become fearful of sounding racist when they have to refer to blacks who are not American, because there is a (mistaken) perception that “black” was discarded as racist. It just went out of style for political reasons.
I worked with a woman who was black and originally from England. I asked her if she would be considered ‘African British’. She said, “we just say black”.
Seppo exceptionlism. There was a KFC ad promoting an Australian cricket tour of the West Indies.
The white Australian guy wins over the locals, sharing his bucket of chicken. Americans got hold of it, and it’s all African American this African American that.
Lost on them that the only American thing was the chicken brand. No comprehension that their stereotypes are not followed worldwide.
Didn’t interviewers call John Boyega a “British African American”?
Not ethnicity related, but an example of the same r/ImTheMainCharacter syndrome that exists a lot across the pond…
John Lennon was being questioned by a reporter in an interview who said something like, “There are people here in America that haven’t taken to the way you look, some people have said that your haircuts are very unamerican.”
John replied:
Well, that’s very observant of them, because we aren’t American actually.
One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen was a news anchor in the US talking about the riots in France and the French African Americans.
That’s because in the US we are told not to apply critical and independent thinking but just use the label that we were most recently was told was correct or we are racist.
When Star Trek: Voyager was released, the Vulcan character Tuvok, played by Tim Russ, was described as an “African-American Vulcan”.
Tuvok was a full blooded vulcan on both sides iirc, which means this makes even less sense than say, a half Vulcan character. Neither side of him is African OR American, never mind a combination of the two.
Still a great character tho.
My mates parents are from Jamaica, but he was born in England, see himself as English but has a affinity to Jamaica. Ask him and he will say he’s English.
PC manager at work called him African American, pissed him right off, was calm and tried to explain he’s neither American nor African and not to call him that, he’s English, or if he wants to refer to race he’s black.
It’s just horrible ignorance from people sometimes.
There’s something really fucked up about someone trying to be politically correct and effectively telling your mate that his ideas about who he is are wrong.
Yup, was fuming afterwards. Talked about taking it further but he felt he finally got through to them and hoped it would never be repeated. We both fucked off not long after.
I would have reported to HR about the incident. Oh wait
I once met a girl from a country in Africa who told a similar story. She got called an African American at the airport (why this happened so casually is a terrible and dumb faux pas and I still can’t figure out how it was appropriate). Well, she completely confused the lady by responding with
No, I’m African African
I had a black friend at uni from south London. It was a while ago but I think his parents were Ghanaian. He would refer to himself as Anglo Blaxon.
When I was in the US I lived with a Jamaican guy who was offended every time he was called African American.
I worked in Afghanistan on a NATO base. One day the gate guards saw a black civilian contractor walk out of the gate and get snatched up by the Afghan Security Forces. The (American) security forces put out a call to everyone on base “Check your people, an African American man just got swept up and we need to know who it is”. Four hours pass with no response and then the British unit on base reported that one of their contractors hasn’t come back from lunch. The Americans said “why didn’t you respond to our urgent call???” To which the Brits obviously said “….. you said it was an African American.”
Yeah they are like that.. I have a friend he is black. He was being called african-argentinian by an american we know.
We tried to told them that here in argentina we don’t use the xxx-american like they do. Here you are either argentino or not, if you are white, black, yellow, pink is not a factor.
He said that it was racism, that we were trying to erase his roots….
I have a friend who is half Carribbean, half Swiss, but born and raised in the UK. She went to the US and got referred to as African American, and when she corrected them that she was neither African nor American they apparently got very angry at her and told her she was “denying her heritage”. Smh.
The most uncomfortable meeting I ever attended was a global one, we went around the room introducing ourselves, great mix of cultures and experience, until it came to an american dude.
American Dude: I am an African American blah blah blah
Nigerian Dude: Excuse me Can you stop using that term please its offensive to me, your American
American Dude: WTF NO I have traced my heritage back to a tribe in central africa, I am a proud african american whose ancestors were sold into the slave trade by evil white colonists
Nigerian Dude: (big Nigerian belly laugh) Your ancestors were either to dumb or too slow to escape my tribe, we sold you to the white man. (more laughter)
and on it went. I was so glad that meeting ended.
I, as a american black person, hate those labels. I was born in America 42 years ago. Why can’t I just be an American? White people aren’t called European Americans. I’ve never even been to Africa and can’t tell you what region my ancestors from Africa come from. My family history, as far as I can trace, are all American born citizens. Doesn’t that just makes me American?
I’ve never heard British American, Spanish American, or anything like that. I even hate the term Native American because I’m sure American wasn’t a thing when they first arrived there. If you’re born in America, just be American!
I had an American get angry at me when I described a friend as ‘African’ because he was from Nigeria.
“It’s AFRICAN-AMERICAN you racist.”
My coworker is from Haiti. Works 3 Jobs. He always wants to punch someone in the face if he is called African American.
I once argued with an American that Australian people of African descent were not in fact ‘African American australians’. Its BIZARRE.
I corrected my boss for calling a woman African American when she was clearly English, but a black woman. He said that it was racist to call someone black… I can’t speak on behalf of the black community, but surely it’s more offensive to call an English person African American just because they’re black rather than calling them black???
I took an African American Studies course in college; for our final project I did a presentation on Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, an American surgeon. One of my classmates chose to do a presentation on Usain Bolt, who is Jamaican
This happened to Stephen K Amos:
So you’re African American?
No, I’m British.
But you’re black?
Y… Yes?
Being called American is a slur tbh
Lenny Henry (English comedian) was once doing a gig in America and the announcer wanted to introduce him as African American. He pointed out that he is neither of those things and asked to be referred to as black instead. Announcer refused because it would be offensive.
Americans have a weird fetish about their roots and lineage
My first wife (who was American), once referred to a black squirrel as an ‘African American Squirrel’. I still think about this.
The comments are from …
r/self | Stop calling me African American. I’m not fucking African American
r/tipofmytongue | [Video] Black, British Olympian corrects American reporter
r/questionTimeELIF | Why use the term African-American?
r/DoYouTrustToothpaste | “African American male with an Australian accent …”