Black or African-American: What's the Difference?

It was one of those uni nights; I had designated my spot in the third-floor stacks where I knew I’d be forever, and I had my change of clothes just in case I’d have to camp out ‘till morning. But the one thing that I was missing was a nice meal to get me through it all. So, I went to none other than the local student joint on campus, The Jolly Scholar, and ordered my usual. Like most times, I ran into a friend, but instead of being greeted with small talk, I was tossed a question. “Hey, my friend from South Korea had a question, and I thought you’d be able to answer it,” tossing her friend the mic she asked, “Soo, what’s the difference between Black and African-American?” The speech and debate retiree possessed me, and, taking a deep breath, arms and hands ajar, I was about to give her the explanation of a lifetime. “Maybe let’s save it for later,” my friend interjected, cutting off what she thought was about to be a 20-minute harangue. Perhaps she was right to do it since I only had a vague idea of what the difference was at the time. Now, I’d say I’m much more equipped to answer that question.

For so long, we have conflated Black and African-American to the point that so many are confused about what distinguishes them. Black Americans have answered the question by not answering the question, “I don’t have a preference either way,” we say with a shrug. Or we do note a preference for the person, usually white, asking us. White people, out of fear of being racist, have avoided asking altogether. There are a few brave souls that have taken the plunge, but they are still left confused after hearing black people’s responses. Foreigners? Well, they just might be the most confused. That’s what we’re here today to solve. Soo, what is the difference between Black and African-American?

Short Answer: Black = race, African-American = ethnicity

Long Answer:

The difference is nothing and everything.

Before discussing the origin of these terms, we must acknowledge the fact that “African-Americans” have gone through a par of different names throughout our time being “Black” — but more on that later.

I think a good place to start is the history of race. It is not intrinsic to European cultures to categorize people into major groups, (there is evidence that ancient Egyptians had macro-categories of peoples) but because of the power Europeans had at the height of the slave trade, their conceptions of race supported by popular pseudo-scientific theories took an unshakeable hold on peoples, colonizer and colonized. No longer looking to the Bible for an understanding of the natural world, Enlightenment philosophers upheld reason and empirical science as the means for determining the truth. However, reason blinded by ignorance, “science” at the time frequently fortified the racist belief that non-Europeans were inferior. In the mid-1700s, there sprung a multitude of theories that aimed at understanding why Africans just looked different. The German physician J.F. Blumenbach coined the term “Caucasian” because he believed that the origin of mankind was the region of the Caucus mountains and from there, humans “degenerated” into other races. He categorized the world into five races: Caucasian (white), Mongolian (yellow), Malayan (brown), Ethiopian (black), and American (red). Blumenbach, unlike influential race theorists at the time, did not believe that non-white races were inferior, but he also didn’t see the degenerative hypothesis, which garnered much support, as racist. If Blumenbach and others were alive today, they’d be shocked to find out that their origin theories were the exact opposite of what they thought. Theories of race continued to evolve and began taking hold with the help of none other than Carl Linnaeus. Who is that, you ask? Well, he’s the father of taxonomy, that is, the reason we say homo sapiens instead of humans if we want to sound educated. Little known fact, he developed a system of human taxonomy as well. In the 18th century, the guy divided the world into four races by continental origin and skin color: “Europæus albescens” were white Europeans, “Americanus rubescens” were red Americans, “Asiaticus fuscus” yellow Asians, and “Africanus nigriculus” were for black Africans. And ever since, we’ve been confused about whether Indians were Asian or black. A joke. Other notable things, he used terms such as “light and wise” to describe Europeans while putting “sly and neglectful” next to Africans. Considering the power of this man’s name, along with other prominent scientists, Anglo-Americans inherited this system of racial categorization, using it to justify the colonization and enslavement of Africans, the genocide of the indigenous, and the dominance of Europeans over all. Thus, race became the framework used to order U.S. society.

And that’s what we mean when we say social construct. But let’s get specific. Race is a social construct often based on biological features society deems important that is used to determine the privileges and benefits of one group and the privations and detriments of another. Publication after publication in early American society solidified the racial caste system. While European leaders deemed the indigenous “savages”, Thomas Jefferson said in his Notes that black people lacked intelligence, tenderness, the ability to grieve, and were incapable of creating high art such as poetry. Thanks, Dad.

I would say we still socially recognize four major racial categories (black, white, Asian, and indigenous) with white at the top and black at the bottom. However, the United States Census Bureau website says something a bit different about race, which will be discussed soon.

Race, a term used sparsely before the race theorists of the Enlightenment, used it to refer to kinship ties and group membership. The term “white” was only used in Anglo-Saxon culture to describe women of high status who had prized, porcelain skin since they did not have to work. “Black”, as far as I could find, did not come into frequent European use until contact was made with Africans through colonization. The oldest term used for Africans was Ethiopian (not just people from modern-day Ethiopia) derived from two Greek words that translate roughly to burnt face. This made sense considering the limited knowledge of Africa the Ancient Greeks had. Nonetheless, the terms “black” and “white” in America evolved closely with the status of being free or enslaved.

Concerning the term “Negro”, literally meaning black, it was first used by the Spanish and Portuguese in the 1440s evinced by the old maps they had of Africa. Then, Negro (or, more formally, Negroid) was considered the politically correct and polite way to call and categorize those African descendants in the United States. However, the first African slaves identified as African, but particularly with their various African tribes before they accepted the term “Negro.” The more specific “Negro” replaced “colored” in political correctness during the 1900s (not to be confused with the term “coloured” @South Africa), and it became the norm. But interestingly, before the 19th century, Negro was used also to refer to Native Americans. Nonetheless, the normalcy of “Negro” to refer to Black Americans was everywhere. In MLK’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Carter G. Woodson’s “The Mis-Education of the Negro” and in organization names such as Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association all coming after the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Not that they really had a choice, but the term “black” was considered rude and worse, the n-word that shall not be named. Important to note, legislation such as The Negro Law of South Carolina in 1848 claimed that “Negro” did not include free continental Africans, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the “Negroes” of the 19th and 20th centuries would have agreed.

The term “Negro” began going out of style during the Civil Rights Movement in the ‘50s and ‘60s when prominent figures like Malcolm X rejected it due to its association with slavery and segregation. Instead, he noted his preference for the terms Black and Afro-American. In the late 1980s, Jesse Jackson attempted to make the final push for “African-American” to be the proper term to describe the descendants of African slaves in the United States. He believed that “African” captured our continental ancestry and “American” captured our nationality and referred to the unique cultural experience that African-Americans have had in the U.S. from slavery to freedom. Okay, soo what about Caribbeans?

Well, here’s where it gets tricky. So much has changed in the human populace since the first Census in 1790 where the only groups you could choose from were: 1) free white females, free white males 2) all other free persons 3) slaves. These include first and foremost the massive decrease in the indigenous population (we know why, RIP), the end of the institution of slavery, the migration of Asian workers, the increase in Latino migration, and most recently, the uptick in migration from “black” countries. After slavery, terms like “colored” and “Negro” entered the Census. However, the idea of who was “black” began to shift. At the end of the 19th century, Caribbean migrants began to come to the U.S. and after the Civil Rights Movement, when it was finally legal, West African immigrants started migrating to the U.S. The story is the same as other immigrants, in search of better jobs, escape from crisis, etc. But what many of these immigrants did (and still do) have in common is their dis-identification with the word “black”. Read more about it in my article: Black People can be Immigrants Too https://link.medium.com/PPFPYX1JBdb

Though this is changing by generation, there’s evidence that those African and Caribbean immigrants write in “Haitian” or “Nigerian” in the “Other” category instead of bubble “Black.” This is for a number of reasons. A lot feel that ‘Black or African American” does not truly capture their identity and is an identifier for Black Americans who’ve been here since the country’s founding. As well, remember the original definition I gave to you of race? Yea, so some black immigrants view “black” as a metonym for lowest caste — which…it is. And why would you want to associate with the lowest caste as a migrant? Though race is not biological, it is associated with phenotype and continental origin. As well, America’s racial system goes for all people currently on American soil. For that reason, when many African and Caribbean immigrants come to the U.S. they are judged as “black” by their features.

Nonetheless, the social experience of race may be deemed the most important, and since race has to do with privilege or lack thereof, what makes someone black?

Oppression.

The main thing that all black people in the U.S. have in common, Jamaican, Afro-Cuban, and Kenyan, is experiencing oppression primarily based on how they look. What Jesse Jackson seemed to be talking about with “African-Americans”, however, was the direct descendants of African slaves brought to the U.S. But there are two things: 1) The name for those descendants from Negro to Black has changed throughout the centuries without any clear distinction between race and ethnicity 2) The Census, asking for both race and ethnicity, also does not make a distinction between either. And the Census website has a slightly different definition of race:

The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups.

Okay…this sounds like a good way to avoid blame. The old, “I’m just noting something that already exists, not perpetuating it,” particularly, not perpetuating the biological, behavioral, and economic generalizations attached to each group.

Then the website establishes:

OMB requires five minimum categories: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.

So, there are 5 racial categories in America. Great. But my favorite part is how they define “Black or African American”: A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. Wait, so Black and African American are interchangeable? And North Africans are…white? Well, according to the Census, yes. I guess that makes my stance just another opinion. But, no. It wasn’t until after the 1950s that Census takers got to choose what their race was instead of Census administers choosing for them. As much as the Census wants to back away from saying race is biological, that social definition of race still has to do with physical characteristics. How else could you identify that Caribbeans have origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa?

On Black and African-American being interchangeable, well, I guess it’s a thing of personal experience. Growing up with one black parent from West Africa and the other from America, I caught on early that all black is not the same. Ethnicity is defined as social group identity based on shared culture, heritage, ancestry, language, and even religion. What makes someone African-American is carrying the history of having slave ancestors while Nigerians, for example, do not. Jazz music, soul food, and BET are also markers of African-American culture while Nollywood, Afrobeat, and jollof rice are what make Nigerians Nigerian. Thus, Nigerians, Liberians, Haitians, and Panamanians are still black but not African-American. For the longest time, the large majority of black people have been African-American, but, with immigration, that is changing.

Question: Soo, African-American or African American? Answer: OG ’80s = African-American. I think the hyphen was used to emphasize the link between black people’s continental origin and nationality. However, the Census officially uses the un-hyphenated “African American”, which, in my brain, sounds like they’re talking about someone from the African continent living in America. This is probably why they used the un-hyphenated “African American” in the first place. But why does this matter anyway? Aren’t these group names arbitrary? Yes and no. Honestly, race feels more arbitrary than ethnicity, but, either way, collecting the information on how a nation’s citizens identify can be useful. The Census website defends:

Information on race is required for many Federal programs and is critical in making policy decisions, particularly for civil rights. States use these data to meet legislative redistricting principles. Race data also are used to promote equal employment opportunities and to assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks.

But as great as that sounds, it seems like those who don’t have any interest in protecting civil rights would use Census data for evil. They’d use it to know just when to cut funding for black programs so black people stay their place. Or they would let only a small amount of minority workers into the company to secure grant money, just to discriminate against brown applicants thereafter. But I guess the good outweighs the bad. At least, I don’t think getting rid of the Census or racial categories of which are deeply embedded in American society would actually fix the problems African-Americans face.

“Just call them American!” You say, but would erasing the “African” in African-American diminish the wealth gap between black and white people? …thought so. But being that race is racist since it is an ideological construction that came out of the scientific racialism of the “Enlightenment”, shouldn’t we eventually reject these arbitrary terms that only serve to tell of our caste status? Well, I don’t think that’s the right question. At least for this article.

A better one is: What do most black people in the U.S. prefer being called? According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 64% of black people said…it doesn’t matter. In the words of my mom, “call me anything but b — .’’ That seems to be the major sentiment amongst black people. I will say, however, that it is sometimes annoying when white people avoid using the term black as much as humanly possible because it is seen as offensive, opting for the supposed politically correct mouthful of “African-American.” I don’t see the issue, just call me black, we often think. White people shouldn’t feel uncomfortable using “black.” In fact, doing so is racist and racist. But also not. The first racism is believing that the biological features, culture, etc. associated with black is all bad. The second is believing that I don’t want to be called black for that reason. Knowing the OG definition and use of race, the thing that doesn’t make it racist is you avoiding calling me another name for lowest caste, which…thanks, I guess? But since we’ve moved far past the scientific racism of Blumenbach’s day, many black people don’t associate it with that. They associate Black with African-American.

The reason I want to create the distinction between the two terms has to do with the fact that the number of black immigrants, especially from Africa, is growing. The longer they are here and get socialized as “black” (i.e. underprivileged and/or ingratiated in African-American culture) having a unifying term that encompasses our experience would be nice — for political organization of course. But should we force the term “Black” on unsuspecting immigrants? Doing so feels like American imperialism. Or should we opt for “African”? Something I’ve heard Africans themselves suggest. Eek. I’ve heard so many black people say they prefer “black” over “African-American” because they do not feel comfortable claiming this “African” identity they cannot even trace, especially in the face of new Nigerian, Somalian, and Egyptian immigrants. To their stance I reply, “Yes, slavery was successful in one of its goals.” I see that the term “Black American” is becoming popular, if one wants to identify with that, so be it.

At the end of the day, I believe we should make black people feel comfortable identifying with whatever they find suitable without them having to explain, justify, or defend their decision. How about it? At least the Census achieved this by making 2020 the first year “Black” identifiers could write more about their origins. Nevertheless, what I find most interesting is how the category “White” has not changed since 1850….new article…coming right up!

Sources: upon request