Teresa Heinz Kerry: My Black Friends Call Me African American

NewsMax.com ^ | Feb. 25, 2004 | Carl Limbacher

[Carl/NewsMax]

First lady wannabe Teresa Heinz Kerry once insisted that her black friends think of her as African American and often refer to her in conversation using the term, a phrase almost universally employed by blacks in America to describe their race.

In 1993, Grant Oliphant - the spokesman for the wealthy Mozambican-born socialite at the time - told the Los Angeles Sentinel, "Her black friends support her decision to call herself African American."

Oliphant described his ketchup-heiress boss as "sensitive to black issues," saying she "traces interests in health care, human rights and the environment from her days of growing up in Africa."

"For decades, many of her black friends have referred to her as an African American," he claimed.

In a story headlined "White Woman Says She is African American, No Hyphen!" the Sentinel explained that Heinz Kerry had "long referred to herself as an African American since moving to the United States from Mozambique in 1964."

Oliphant justified his boss' description of herself as African American by saying she doesn't hyphenate the two words, saying that makes the term applicable to both blacks and whites who have come to the U.S. from Africa.

But Ron Walters, chairman of the political science department at Howard University, objected to Heinz Kerry's use of the term regardless of the hyphen. Walters told the Sentinel that she was not African, but a European living in Africa.

"It doesn't change things," Walters said. "It's not a consistent usage. Some people use the hyphen, and some people don't. They mean the same thing."

Heinz Kerry's description of herself as African American at a 1993 gathering of the Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania caused a "storm of criticism" from local black leaders, the Baltimore Sun noted on Tuesday.

At the time, she was weighing a Senate run to replace her recently deceased husband, John Heinz, whose 1991 death made her heir to the Heinz Foods fortune and one of the wealthiest women in the U.S.

But as recently as 1995 - the year she married Sen. John Kerry - the Mozambican emigre was touting her African roots, according to Tuesday's Sun report.

A call to Sen. Kerry's presidential campaign inquiring whether his wife still refers to herself as African American was not returned by press time.

A spokesman for Sen. John Edwards declined to comment on the flap.

Rachel Nordlinger, spokeswoman for the Rev. Al Sharpton, said she had brought Mrs. Heinz Kerry's "African American" claim to his attention and was awaiting his response.

[reed_inthe_wind]

They know how much money you have too.

[LRoggy]

Didn't we just have a situation that was posted here a few months ago where a white student from an African nation insisted on calling himself African-American, and got into trouble for doing so? I think he is in high school now and tried to get an affirmative-action type stipend.

[cyborg]

Such is the folly of labels and identification.

[.cnI redruM]

BWAHAHAHAH!!! If she's lucky, they don't call her "Powder".

[Wissa]

Is it her servants that she's referring to as her "black friends"?

[EggsAckley]

Yup. Just a few weeks ago.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Quite honestly, I agree with any native - white or black - who hails from Africa and has moved to the US. They are well within their pervue to call themselves "African-Americans". That really irks a lot of lib black people though........

[KQQL]

PATHETIC @

[imintrouble]

Seems to me hyphens give a lot of grief to many countries and it is an insult to an adopted country to continue describing yourself as another.

Africans of the black race are generally identifiable as of that race, while being BORN IN AMERICA, thus they are Americans - no hyphen or separation at all.

If they want to remain Africans - I suggest they return to that foreign continent and see if they can survive.

Why people insist on separating themselves from the country into which they born is beyond me.

"Pride" or whatever they are striving for with nomenclature identification, might well be gained by achieving personal pride in serving their nation...their country of birth!!!

[rightwingcrazy]

I think I've discovered the politically correct syntactic rule for hyphenated designations:

Pre-hyphen descriptor designates race or ethnicity;
post-hyphen descriptor designates current place of residence.

Thus, a 70-th generation North African of Arab ethnicity living in America would be Arab-American, not African-American. A 10th generation American of German extraction living in Mozambique would be surprised to learn that he was a German-Mozambiquan, not an American-Mozambiquan.

Glad I got that straight.

[KQQL]

Monsieur John Kerry

I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations. - The Crimson 02/18/1970
"A bold progressive internationalism," Kerry. - JK Website

Kerry said "I think there has been an exaggeration," when asked if the President has overstated the threat of terrorism. - SC Debate 01/29/04

"We are not going to solve the problem of terrorism with this kind of retaliation," Kerry.
RE: 04/1986 US Air Strike against LIBYA - Hannity's Book, "Deliver Us From Evil"
Opposed death penalty until 2002, voted against military action in the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

[babaloo]

My Black friends call me Babaloo.

[KQQL]

TARZAN and HEinz in 04!

[dfwgator]

Of course it only caused a stir when she was still considered a Republican. Now that she is with a Rat, the media will completely ignore it.

[Mr. Mojo]

her black friends think of her as African American and often refer to her in conversation using the term

lol....what? "Yeah, I'm good friends with that Heinz woman heir.......you know, the African American."

[AuH2ORepublican]

"Didn't we just have a situation that was posted here a few months ago where a white student from an African nation insisted on calling himself African-American, and got into trouble for doing so?"

---

Yup. Check out the first 4 threads listed here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?s=white+african&ok=Search&q=quick&m=all&o=time&SX=403ce328400558dc2c8ab912494cd83c2bf0e2a2


Personally, I don't see why anyone should complain about Teresa Heinz calling herself African American, since she *is* from Africa and is a naturalized American citizen. Using the phrase "African-American" as a euphemism for black is just plain silly, since (i) not everyone in Africa is black---in fact, most North Africans are not black, (ii) there are plenty of blacks who are not even of African descent, such as natives of New Guinea and Australian aborigines, and (iii) millions of blacks are neither African nor are they U.S. citizens---so do we have to call then African-Brazilians or African-Canadians? If black Americans want to distinguish themselves from blacks from other countries, they can just refer to themselves as "Americans," period.

[Steve_Seattle]

The whole ethnicity thing is bull****. "Colored people" is racist, "People of color" is politically correct, and the biggest "civil rights" organization in the country is called the "National Association of Colored People." Who writes these rules, anyway?

[KQQL]

@