Bake That, Linguist!

I absolutely despise calling myself ‘black.’

I realize that a lot of African Americans have no issue calling themselves black or negro or colored. (Even though, if you really think about it, everyone and everything on this planet is colored, but I digress…)

I can’t tell you how to label yourself, nor can I police the labels you use. I realize that people will disagree with my mindset, and that’s perfectly fine, but hold my argument in your mind and see if you can follow my thought process.

People like to talk about African Americans as if we have no history before we were brought to this country. So let’s start there: If we choose to conveniently forget everything that came before, then understand that for the last 500+ years that we have been in North America alone, we were stripped of our own personal and ethnic labels. Our Ancestors oppressors created new labels for us. We weren’t even allowed to use our oppressors language to create new label for ourselves.

Understand that negro means black, and the way that it was used in Portuguese and Spanish—I’m talking about ever since the expulsion of the Moors and the political and linguistic changes that were caused by the Roman Catholic church and the Inquisition—that negro meant black thing. We Asiatic-African peoples, mainly the African peoples, became things in their languages. 

Understand that colors in Indo-European languages typically are objects, because a color is an idea and a thing.

So, if English is an Indo-European language, and colors are things, and we consciously recognize them as being things, then are we not in fact, calling ourselves things?

I mean, really think about it! When you call yourself black or white or yellow or brown, you are referring to yourself as an object. You are denying your own humanity through your speech, thanks to a historical precedent, and you are denying your ancestors, your culture and your history.

Understand that, that is how the rise of the enslavement of the Moors became a reality. When you deny your enemy’s humanity, then you can justify indefensible acts of violence.

I am not black.

I am not a crayon.

I am a human being who happens to be of African and Native American ancestry.

Why not just label myself as an American? Because there is no frame of reference. Not really. (As an aside: There are 2 continents with the word “America” in it. Three if you count Central America. The people in Central and South America also refer to themselves as Americans.)

African American is meant to be a generic term because it tells those of us who are the descendants of slaves who we were, from whence we came and how we came to be in this country. I am African American because my ancestors were brought from the Bight of Biafra and Lagos on my mother’s side, generic West African on my dad’s side thanks to a convenient loss of papers. I am Native American because my dad’s side belongs to the Cherokee; my mother’s side belongs to the Creek. I am ‘American’ because I was born in this country from the descendants of slaves and the indigenous, and because I choose to be a U.S. citizen.

To put it another way, humans have a bad habit of objectifying themselves and those that they deem as less than them. This is what helped to make it so easy to label our ancestors as human-looking apes (according to John Locke) or in “modern times” as 3/5 of a person, because people of African descent were never referred to nor thought of as human beings in the first place. Native Americans as well.

If my Ancestors, even my parents, were dehumanized for being worth less than certain other ethnic groups who conveniently shed their ethnic identities, and were taught by society that they were less than human, then why would I perpetuate that same cycle with my speech?

Think about it dear ones. I’m for bed.

Peace, Love & Oreos!