Posted on 09/05/2011 5:31:13 PM PDT by ilovesarah2012
There was a time until the early 1960s when the terms to describe those of African decent, like me -- African-American or Black or Afro-American -- were almost unheard of.
I remember a distinct conversation with a friend discussing descriptive terms for ourselves in 1963 or ’64. The term “black” was just coming into vogue and he didn’t like it one bit. “Call me a Negro,” he said, “but don’t call me black.”
Now, the word “Negro” (publications used a lower case “n”) has almost become a pejorative, so I was a little surprised when my pastor, the Rev. Willie Reid, used it during Thursday’s revival. “Back when we were Negroes,” he said, and listed several things that were different about black life in America back then.
That got me to thinking. Back when we were Negroes in the 1950s, “only 9 percent of black families with children were headed by a single parent,” according to “The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies” by Kay Hymowitz. “Black children had a 52 percent chance of living with both their biological parents until age 17. In 1959, “only 2 percent of black children were reared in households in which the mother never married.” But now that we’re African-Americans, according to Hymowitz, those odds of living with both parents had “dwindled to a mere 6 percent” by the mid-1980s.
(Excerpt) Read more at macon.com ...
That's similar to not being able to say "poetry book", but saying "book of poetry" is ok.
Back in the late 60’s/early 70’s I seem to remember an elderly Black lady being interviewed on TV.
She said “I been a n*gg*r, I been colored, I been a Ne-gro, I been Black, and now I’m a Afri-Can American.”
“I ain’t changing no mo”
>>”You people”? It hasn’t been white people who have forced the change from Negro to Black and then to African American.
I think in that line he was speaking to the black community, not to whites.
Your right, the MSM are the one’s that made Jackson and Sharpton the voices of the black community...That was the 2 they always ran to for comments....
I will be 64 next month. I grew up in the South and in Washington, DC. I was in second grade when “Brown v Board of Education” integrated the DC schools and my class went from one white teacher with 28 white students to 3 teachers with 41 students. All of various shades.
Several years later we were back in Georgia living with my grandmother. I was taught to be polite to the “colored folk”, and never insult them by calling them “black”. If you were highfaluting, you would say “Negro”. A reasonable compromise for both races was “Nigra”. “African” was an insult.
Later, of course, Africa-American and Black became fashionable. When I was in the Corps in the 60’s, “Splib” was acceptable. Somewhere about that time “Brothers” or “Bros” were used by both races.
It looks like PEOPLE will never see the realization of Dr. King’s dream. Some race pimp of one shade or another will keep changing the terminology so that the focus remains on skin color.
Heaven forbid anyone talk about character. Bill Cosby barely gets away with it. Thomas Sowell, Walter Wlliams and others are ignored and Clarance Thomas & Alan Keyes are vilified.
Hopefully, Herman Cain & Alan West will become known simply as good MEN. Period.
Trying to skip out of school was the hardest to do...they had a patrol of Detroit police (we called them flyers) that patrolled several times during the day to catch the school skippers....I got good at it...Until one day I came home from school and my mother was ironing (I can still see her standing at the ironing board ) She asked me where I was all day and I said school and she replied..."thats not the truant officer said when he called"
PS the flyers had 4 big cops in the car, you wanted to avoid them (even if you were white) :O)
The American Jews that vote Dem are for the most part not Jews. There is nothing Jewish about them other than maybe their names. They are Godless liberals first, and liberals last.
“Kinda leaves me to think that White folks just ain’t welcome in Black or Afro-American or Afro-American churches.”
Yep, Sunday morning...the most segregated hour in America.
They became black after desegragation. Now that blacks could go anywhere they flocked to the white businesses to which they had been previously banned. Thus killing many of the businesses in the black community and leading to the downward spiral.
We live in a fallen world. We can be incredibly evil to each other. Look at what goes on in “families” these days.
In the slave days people were people. Like to today, most people were just working hard to take care of their families and put food on the table. They weren’t self-destructive, or working to see how evil they could be.
There were slave owners who freed their slaves before the Civil War. They were family! There were slave owners who looked to the day slavery would be ended. In the mean time, slaves needed their homes and their job. They needed protection.
An old time Southern family member asked me, “Can you quit your job, and just run off?”
It’s so wrong that the other side of the story of American Negroes is not taught.
I wish them all the luck in the world. Write me again in ten years. I will be anxious to hear how it turned out.
Really sad to see a once-great American city like Detroit in ruins. It’s embarrassing that this city is in America. Looks like a lot of shovel-ready jobs there.
Thank you Jesse Jackson and Al Shakedown. They are now slaves to the DNC machine.
Pray for America
You must be more clear by what you mean by “the n-word”.
Well I was in Jr. High School in Los Angeles in the 50's and that is where I first became friends with some 'colored guys' - and that is the term that was in common use in those days. These guys were just ordinary Joes with the exception that they all could run circles around me on the athletic field - and I was a pretty good athlete at that age.
I couldn't agree with you more about the relationship of the Democrat Party and the 'Colored' People. The Dems do have a vested interest in keeping them poor and they have done an excellent job in that regard. The Tea Party movement (note: I did not say GOP) has a vested interest in making the 'Colored' People RICH and that is why they are hated by the Dems.
What interesting times we live in. The election of 2012 is going to be one for the ages.
Just look at Haiti or any one of numerous African nations. I don’t know why but it seems blacks everywhere, left to their own devices, create chaos. Even the Bahamas has so much more crime than before they got their independence.
Well, it’s obvious the author is a self-loathing Uncle Tom....just kidding....
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