Linda Daniels' grandparents were colored.
Her parents were Negroes.
She is black.
Her children are African American.
The variety of names used to describe family members of Daniels, director of Multicultural Programs, exhibits the evolution of ethnic identification throughout American history.
It's all a matter of time
Daniels said. What people reference is a reflection of when you grew up ' we were 'black' in the '60s and '70s.
Daniels points to the names of student organizations at Ohio University, such as Black Student Cultural Programming Board, Black Student Business Caucus and Black Student Communication Caucus ' all of which came about in the '70s and early '80s ' as being reflective of the times. Although some change in the nomenclature used to describe the races, particularly that of people of color, can be attributed to generational trends, some people have passionate reasons for what they choose to be called.
I have never been to Africa; everyone I know is from America; if anything my family roots go back to the Bahamas so I prefer 'black' to 'African American
' Taraja Shephard, a senior telecommunications major, said.
Arriving in common usage during the '80s, African American
a derivative of Afro American
was favored by some black leaders, including Jesse Jackson and Malcolm X, who famously noted the state of the race as 22 million African Americans ' that's what we are ' Africans who are in America.
Junior Danielle Best said the terminology African American holds more meaning to her than black.
At least when you say 'African American
' it has that history behind it
she said. What the heck type of history does the color black have with it?
But for Joan Weston of the African American Studies Department, the usage of black was a very calculated, political move during the '50s and '60s.
Taken from the phrase 'Black Power,' black represented a strong dismantling of the Eurocentric notion of understanding the world, Weston said.
For some
'African American' references back to the colonization movement of the 1830s
in which the answer to the problem of free blacks in America was to send them back to Africa
Weston said.
The quandary over what to call ethnic groups is not restricted to blacks. The debate over Hispanic versus Latino is evident as well.
Hispanic is a term made up by the government to categorize everyone into one group
