re: #412 wheat-dogghazi

People in Asia don’t understand why some matters of Western history and culture are repulsive to Westerners. The finer points of referring to African-Americans are lost on my Chinese students, until I point out the necessity of avoiding offense. Many Chinese books on US history still use “negro” or “Negro,” which students (not knowing better) repeat in class.

Are they just really old books?

I tried using “African-American” for awhile, until my Jamaican friends took offense (their families left Jamaica 60 years ago, but all the generations still identify very strongly with the culture). Some are US citizens, some are Brits, they’re willing to accept West Indian, and from white people who are discussing larger demographics they’ll take Black as the group descriptor, but they definitely don’t like African American as it seems to lump their culture with people whose families have been here since antebellum times.

(I think the reason they’re so sensitive about it is that most of the Caribbean slaves were freed by revolts of their own doing, they were under Black self-rule for 100 years before the U.S. got rid of Jim Crow.)