Cleveland.com

By Charles Mosley

By using the term "African-American" to refer to black people and using it as a synonym for black people, writers, columnists, readers, TV hosts and commentators perpetuate and embrace Jim Crow racial stereotypes, segregation and historical distortions. African-American is a late 1960s Madison Avenue term created to give a glitzy advertising name for marketing to the emerging and newly appreciated economic power of black people. But there were no black people on Madison Avenue in the late '60s giving input -- only sweeping floors. So the term has no historical accuracy, social relevance or meaning.

The term African-American is a false, divisive racial identifier. It is as empty and nebulous as the outdated identifier "colored," which at least was inclusive. African-American refers only to American descendants of black slaves, but even then it fails to accomplish its purpose as a racial identity. Africa is not a racial or ethnic identity. Africa is a geographic identity. There is no country or commonality of Africa. Africa is a continent with 53 different countries, each with different peoples -- many of them white -- languages, religions, cultures, political systems and histories. Many of these countries and tribes are enemies and resent being stereotyped into a monolithic group. Africans identify themselves by the country they come from or the tribe to which they belong: Egyptian, Liberian, Zulu, Kenyan, Ethiopian, Hutu, South African, etc. African-American is as meaningless and wrong as identifying someone from South America as American.

African-American is used to falsify, distort, mislead and sanitize the harsh truths of American history. You hear and read references to African-American slaves. Slaves had no rights and privileges, so what was "American" about a slave? References are made about black World War II soldiers as African-American soldiers. What was American about the strict and demeaning racial segregation of the military? Even libraries and museums that should know better fall victim to these distortions and sanitizations. The Smithsonian opened an African-American museum and exhibits artifacts of the strictly segregated Tuskegee Airmen and shards of glass from the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham where four black girls were killed by a bomb. The ludicrous contradiction of associating American with either of these speaks for itself. No official or unofficial historical record, document, newspaper story, book, court record or any written or oral evidence refers to black people by any identifier other than Negro, colored or black. From Crispus Attucks to George Washington Carver to Jackie Robinson to James Baldwin to Dorothy Height, we were never referred to as African-American.

The term African-American segregates and divides brown and black people in America. Since the term refers only to American descendants of black slaves, it carries all the tortured history and negative stereotypes associated. Use of the term excludes brown and black Americans who originate from India, Cuba, Haiti, Saudi Arabia, Pacific Islands, Jamaica, France, Spain, Mexico, Egypt and many other countries. These brown and black people who are not descendants of black slaves reject and resent being referred to as African-American but fully accept being black. Here are two examples. Brown and black kids from Mexico and Central America are waging a race war in Los Angeles against so-called African-American kids. Massachusetts and Louisiana have brown-skinned governors, but only Massachusett's governor is referred to as an African-American. So this sets up the illogic of having two black governors but only one African-American governor. This linguistic Jim Crow is real, exploited and serves to prevent what should be a natural, mutual and strong social and political cohesion among all brown and black peoples in America.

Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Buck O'Neil, Lena Horne, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X referred to themselves as Negroes or blacks, not African-Americans. James Brown's song was "Black and Proud," not African-American and proud. Stokely Carmichael preached "black power," not African-American power. Huey Newton formed the Black Panther Party, not the African-American Panther Party. There were no African-American sections in the holds of slavers, on the train Plessy rode or on the busses the Freedom Riders rode!

Use the unity, genius and correctness of their simplicity.

Charles Mosley, of Thibodaux, La., was an East Cleveland councilman from 1971 to 1976 and is a past president of the Lafourche Parish NAACP in Louisiana.