Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 March 12

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March 12

When the blacks became the blacks in the US?

Immediately after being brought from Africa as slaves, blacks would not identify with each other, nor consider themselves American and lest be consider American by the white Americans. When did they become just "the black" (or the PC word of the time "Negro", "colored", "Afro-American")? --Llaanngg (talk) 22:58, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

I question your assumption that they wouldn't have identified with each other. Those who spoke different African languages and not English would have had an obvious communications problem, but I imagine they quickly learned the basics of English and/or whatever creole was spoken in their area. It sounds like your Q is more about when they felt they were Americans. The obvious answer is when they were granted citizenship, but the obvious answer isn't always correct. StuRat (talk) 23:05, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is not a thing as "the blacks" (that's an identity created in the US, or at other places) and there were and are plenty of African wars to prove that they can hate each other to death. So, I question your questioning of my assumption that they wouldn't have identified with each other. --Llaanngg (talk) 23:26, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand your logic. There were plenty of wars between the Greek city states in antiquity, that doesn't mean that they didn't identify as Greeks. So absence of war does not seem to be a pre-condition. --Lgriot (talk) 11:29, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

IIRC, it was only after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s (and well into the 1980s) that people in the United States felt comfortable enough to acknowledge their African ancestry and identify as African American. See African Americans#Terminology. So, it's not that they felt they weren't American or considered American by others but that it wasn't encouraged to take pride in having African ancestry (especially if you weren't sure where in Africa your ancestors even came from). Negro, black, and colored, on the other hand, were all references to skin-color and even used as legal terms by whites. It's kind of been a back-and-forth about what's considered proper, as "Negro" was used more among the African American community because "black" was considered offensive, but now "Negro" is outdated and "black" isn't generally considered offensive. clpo13_(talk) 23:14, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

There are interesting parallels in the way i which more recent immigrant communities identify with their country of residence. The basic pattern seems to be that first generation immigrants identify with their country of origin, second generation tend to be rather mixed up about it, and the third generation usually identify more or less completely with their new country. That may have taken a bit longer within a slave society, just as it does if there are stronger cultural or religious distinctions between the immigrant and native communities today. 109.150.174.93 (talk) 13:18, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

See Tebbit test --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 08:14, 14 March 2016 (UTC)