I consider myself a considerate, woke person. I keep up with our evolving language out of respect for my fellow humans. I’m comfortable using the pronoun “they” when referencing a nonbinary person (though I’ve read an article by a celebrated linguist and they agreed that it doesn’t make any grammatical sense to use that word for a single person). I never want my words to unintentionally offend someone. And that’s why I prefer to use the term African-American instead of Black, regardless of where that person is from.
Sure, my one African-American friend and several African-American coworkers have told me that Black is a totally acceptable and actually preferable descriptor to use. And sure, there have been a bunch of articles written on the subject by other African-Americans who agree with them. I simply don’t think I have the right to use a word that could be considered not politically correct, even if that is the word they would like to be described with. As a white woman, it’s not my place to decide.
Believe me, I know that the slave trade made it so that the African diaspora is worldwide. My African-American British barista has reminded me of that several times. She told me to stop calling her African-American because she was born and raised in a country that wasn’t the United States and also to stop coming in when she’s working. But that’s just one person’s opinion!
If every single African-American in every single country told me personally that they didn’t mind being referred to as Black, then maybe I would reconsider my usage. Until then, am I supposed to assume that “Black” is a term that African-Americans from countries all over the world are comfortable with? How brazen is that?
I suppose that I could start calling African-Americans who are not American by their country of origin, but that just seems excessive. African-British? African-Swedish? African? It’s all too much! There’s already one term that I can use to refer to people of African descent across the globe, and that term is African-American. Why fix what’s not broken, you know?
Look, I’m happy to change the words I use if it makes a marginalized group feel more comfortable. But I just feel that, if I’m forced to see color (which I normally don’t, for the record!), I should be free use the term that I feel best respects the people I’m referencing, regardless of their opinions on the matter. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch “African-American Panther” with my children.
