The term "African -American"

[byrthebb]

Every time I hear someone use the term "African-American" I want to ask "Oh- that's interesting, just where in Africa are you/they from?" I might also be inclined to ask what color the person is as well because.... not everyone in Africa is black! Many Germans settled there (many but not all were Nazis) after WWII. Although I think most of the

Comments

[lonejedi]

You're absolutely right. Such silly euphemisms are also used to describe blindness, and it's frustrating! I've heard everything from "person with a visual disability", "visually impaired", "visually limited", "sight impaired", "seeing impaired", "hard of seeing", "visually challenged", "person who is blind" (very rarely), "vision impaired", "sight challenged", "someone who is, you know, uh...", and everything else you can imagine to avoid the word blind. This is also so for many other disabilities. We generally find that people use such terms to hide guilty feelings, or to hide from the fact that opression exists. Generally speaking, people with disabilities don't use such euphemisms, and many black people don't, either. We find that it's the group with power (whites or nondisabled people) who use euphemisms. The troubling thing is that it doesn't call attention to the attitudes that need to change. It's also interesting to note that, while the idea is to reduce the stigma, it doesn't. We don't use such longwinded language to describe