Back In African-American

It was late in December, the sky turned to snow . . . and blacks in the United States became African-Americans.

It was thirty years ago this month, just before the holidays, that that the Reverend Jesse Jackson, having taken a giant step for black Americans as a serious presidential candidate in 1988 and having gotten blacks to register in record numbers in advance of the general presidential election between Republican George Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis, declared that, henceforth, blacks in the U.S. should be called African-Americans.   

''To be called African-Americans has cultural integrity. It puts us in our proper historical context," Jackson explained. "Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical cultural base. African-Americans have hit that level of cultural maturity."

Ironically, Jackson's statement coincided with the beginning of the end of white ethnic identity in America.  Dukakis was the last presidential nominee of either party to revel in his white ethnicity - his Greekness - and Mario Cuomo, the Democrats' dream presidential candidate, was very much an Italian-American in every sense of term.  But think about it, how many white ethnic public figures are identified by their "historical cultural base" anymore?  No one says that Andrew Cuomo, Mario's son, could be the first Italian-American President.  No one points out that Mike Pompeo is our first Secretary of State of Italian descent (much to the relief of those of us who are all or part Italian).  Nancy Pelosi is the first female Speaker of the House, but who ever referred to her as the first Italian-American Speaker of the House?  And how is it that her fellow Baltimorean Martin O'Malley exudes Irishness and yet is called one of the whitest Democrats ever to run for President?

Personally, I think Americans should celebrate any heritage you want, but the idea that Caucasians of various ethnic backgrounds should all be called whites and that blacks should be called African-Americans suggests, even if the Reverend Jackson didn't intend to suggest so, that blacks consider their continental origin more important than their nationality.  This is an example of "identity politics" that liberals exalt as a strike against "white patriarchy," though if I, as a white male, am part of a secret group that rules America, well, I'm never invited to the meetings.  This also suggests that most white people have no real cultural base to celebrate, and those who celebrate their European cultural bases only prove how white - how "Eurocentric" - they are.  But none of that is why I avoid using the term "African-American."  I avoid it because it takes too damn long to say and write!  It's an example of what Paul Fussell called the inflation of simple, direct language.  He noted that the trend to go from "black" to "African-American" was based on the idea that a hyphenated, seventeen-letter, seven-syllable-word sounded much more grand than a monosyllabic five-word one.  Also, there's more semantic parity by saying "white" and "black" - five letters and one syllable each.  I had to laugh when some white ultraconservatives started calling themselves "European-Americans" as a counterpoint to "African-Americans" - a stupid idea, not just because "European-American" sounds just as pretentious as "African-American" if not more so, but because the people who call themselves that don't want to be associated with European ideas such as gun control, support for the arts, or universal health care.  And then Pat Buchanan once referred to whites as "Euro-Americans."  What are we, sport sedans?

To be fair, the word "black" has long been associated with connotations that Americans of African descent want nothing to do with - the Black Plague, a black future, Black Tuesday (the stock market crash of 1929), black dress for funerals - something Fussell later admitted to.  But it's also a positive word, as in "black tie" (classy), "black gold" (striking oil), and "in the black" (a profit), and when the word was first used to refer to the people once called Negroes, the terms "Black is beautiful" and "Black Power" had a really cool, strong vibe to it.  "White" is supposed to be all about positive connotations. such as purity, but I would argue that "white" has become a pejorative.  Ironically, we Caucasians are responsible for that, having rendered the word toxic by giving the world a slew of embarrassments from Christopher Columbus to George Custer, and from Lawrence Welk to Donald Trump.  By the way, why can't you use the term "Negro," but you can use the term "Caucasian," even though both are legitimate anthropological terms?

Conclusion?  If you want to use the term "African-American," knock yourself out.  But I don't feel obliged to use it just because Jesse Jackson would like me to.  I also have a thing against capitalizing racial terms, such as "White" or "Black" . . . but that's another issue.

As for the 1988 election, Dukakis lost, and voter turnout was at its lowest point in over sixty years.