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Originally posted by Averett
I'm not quite sure if I get what you're saying, so correct me if I'm wrong. Yes, black people have been saddled with some pretty shitty names. Hell, myown grandfather who's 78 refers to the guy who does his lawn as the "Colored boy who mows my lawn." It makes me cringe...
Anyway, Karby, are you saying that white people came up with the term African American to further seperate Blacks and Whites? It seems to me that blacks came up with it to get in touch with their "heritage." And really, it doesn't make any sense. All it does if further seperate Blacks and Whites.
Excuse the poor spelling, I'm sure I butchered a few words in there.
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oh no...i was responding to TGHL's post about how the the whole hyphenated label bit got started. i was just trying to say that labels have existed for a pretty long time. i read THGL's post as 'blacks started it because they had nothing better to do.'--of course s/he didn't say that, but that's how it came off to me. i said those things to give a reason as to why any labels exist at all, and also to say that one of the reasons the hypenated label exists now is because the labels that were given earlier were, as you said, shitty.
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For a long time, many white people couldn't call themselves American either, so to say "whites were the only ones" is somewhat ignorant.
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...i wasn't saying that whites were the only ones. i was saying that whites got the benefit before anyone else did, and they weren't quite...open to sharing.
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What about asians? When the Chinese first started immigrating here, there were laws made against them and they were widely hated because of their strange looks and quick success in the gold rush and railroad business.
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i didn't say blacks were the only ones who always got the short end of the stick:
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it was a long time before blacks or any other ethnic group other than white could truly call themselves an 'American'.
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...that was all..