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Thursday, April 6, 2006
You have spoken: Hyphenated terms are not a necessity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Be careful what you ask for.
I’d hoped to start a dialogue about the use of hyphenated descriptions like African-American and Irish-American. In Tuesday’s column, I wrote that I prefer the term, “black.” Never said I was right. Didn’t say anyone else was wrong. Simply stated my preference, then asked readers to respond.
You know what they say about opinions. Everybody’s got one. Man, did we get yours. 150 postings (and counting) on the Badie blog. Roughly 30 e-mails. A dozen phone calls. And most folk responded civilly.
With a few exceptions. Conversation can turn sour quickly when you identify yourself as”Madd Black Man” or “Angry White Man.” The only place to go from there is the gutter. Then, when someone (actually, several) threw Cynthia McKinney into the mix, online chatter became deeply mired in peripheral issues about slavery’s origins, the race card, victimization, white guilt. What Richard Pryor said decades ago applies today: We can sit in a room together, all warm and fuzzy, yet not know squat about each other. In fact, we can come across as incensed with each other.
Too many, though a minority, are defensive. And bold. Thanks to the Internet. Online, we can say anything. Anonymously. We can be inflammatory and insensitive. Call someone a dummy or worse. Pontificate with half-truths and nonsense. All under the auspices of a nickname.
“I think this blog should be specifically for African-Americans,” wrote Madd Black Man in the Badie blog. “No other opinion matters.”
“Fuzzy” took the bait.
“I am a MADD White Man or should I say ‘sick’ white man,” he wrote. “I am sick of people like you and your ilk who want to have your cake and eat it, too. You scream racism on every issue. You talk about slavery and being oppressed. When were you ever a slave and oppressed? Never!”
The good news, though, is that most of you were cordial. You stuck to the subject. Thanks. And in your comments, one theme dominated, regardless of color or ethnicity: Hyphenated terms may be an option, but they aren’t a necessity. Ricky Saxton, while acknowledging his African descent, prefers to think of himself as a Southerner. “To this day, it makes other blacks angry for me to say and think that way,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Dotty Bailey joked that she was a “European-Germanic-Native American-American.” “I’m white, too,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Frankly, I prefer to identify myself just as a proud American, the mom of two kids who are both serving their country.”
You may ask: What’s the lesson here? What do we take away from this? We don’t talk enough or ask enough questions about things or people we don’t understand.We shrug our shoulders. Move on. But eventually that which we don’t understand becomes an issue. Out of ignorance and frustration, we attack. And now America faces another racially tinged issue: illegal — and legal — immigration.
We are nowhere near ready.
