The term 'Negro'? Color it obsolete? [ 2/8/10 LA Times]

[Guest guest]

The consciousness of the planet is still very 'stone age' and barbaric as people can be controlled in one way or another by 3 words or less. My contention is that, sadly, I can send 90%+ of the American population into at least a near psychotic state. Sadly, it's my finding that it's worse than 20 years ago as more and more words are added to the 'you can't say that list' - the latest being 'retarded/retard'. People NEED to confront and accept all words - they are only sounds. Words that are said innocently or with some love and are still enough to send people into a frenzy need to be decharged. There will be NO human evolution with any number of 'roadblocks'. This is a BIG one!Arhata

The term 'Negro'? Color it obsoleteWhen a website pointed out that 'Negro' was going to appear once more on the 2010 census, many blacks reacted with shock and distaste. They see it as a relic of the bad old days of segregation.by Aubry KaplanThe Los Angeles Times2/8/10America's Negro problem just won't quit. The Census Bureau has been

using the term "Negro" as a racial identifier on its decennial forms

since 1950, later joined -- though not supplanted -- by "black" and

"African Am." But when the website thegrio.com

recently pointed out that "Negro" was going to appear once more on the

2010 census, many black folks reacted with shock and pointed distaste.

Bloggers and pundits condemned the term as a relic of the bad old days

of segregation and Jim Crow that has no business in official records

anymore.

The Census Bureau says it simply wants to ensure that everybody of

color is counted, and that its meticulously vetted decision is based on

the fact that more than 50,000 older blacks wrote in "Negro" on the

last census, in 2000. But that purely scientific stance hasn't quelled

the protests.

I get why. Though it was the accepted term until the late '60s, for

those born after that, "Negro" is something they never answered to, a

word that sounds only slightly less incendiary than "nigger." Even

older blacks tend to use it ironically or sarcastically when they use

it at all, as in: "Those Negroes just can't get it together." Its taint

goes back to slavery, when Southerners paternalistically referred to

even free blacks as "our Negroes." Contrast this unpleasantness with

Barack Obama, who has established a 21st century standard of racial

consideration that's figuring into just about every discussion of color

these days. To blacks of all ages, "Negro" and President Obama sharing

the same era just feels wrong -- maybe he isn't post-racial, but isn't

he at least post-Negro?

This controversy may be new, but the angst about what to call ourselves

is ancient. Over the last 40 years, we have self-identified as "black,"

"Afro-American" and "African American" in an attempt get out from under

the subjugationrepresen ted

by "Negro" and, before that, "colored." But the history of all this is

hardly a straight line. "Black" is associated with '60s pride and

power, but it was once considered derogatory and far less appropriate

than "Negro," which evolved after emancipation into a relatively

respectable term. "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," the stirring

Weldon song that will be performed regularly during African

American History Month -- or is it Black History Month? -- started out

as the "Negro National Anthem."

"Afro-American" has a similar reputation of '60s radicalism, but its

use dates to the turn of the 20th century, a time when blacks were

fighting for social inclusion against frightful odds; the magazine

Advance described as part of its mission "obtaining for the

Afro-American an equal chance." The term "African American,"

popularized in the '80s by , is an amalgam of all the

terms before it that sought to bring a measure of peace to the

conflicted notion of being a black American, a notion that demanded

acknowledgment of citizenship and common history as well as a racial

experience and identity that's separate and unique. But even the bold

word "African" was not new, having had its turn in colonial times, when

the First African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded. It had also

been used by whites to describe slaves and blacks in general, and by

the 19th century had fallen out of favor.

Like the president, I am part of that black generation whose

lifetime spans pretty much all of the above. I was born a Negro in 1962

-- it's on my birth certificate -- and in short order became black,

Afro-American and African American. Although I appreciate the impulse

for self-definition and self-determination that attended each of these

name changes, I can't say that any of them has impacted my life in any

measurable way. I will say that I've never liked "African American" --

too cumbersome and self-conscious. Nor does it cover the African

diaspora in America as neatly as the word "black," which most people of

color I know use most commonly to describe themselves.

"African American" also gave too many blacks the sense that simply

changing a name to something more dignified or ethnically accurate

counts as racial progress. What it has mostly done is let us say that

30% of African Americans live in poverty, and that more than half of

African American men of working age are unemployed in some cities. Do

we value African Americans now more than we valued blacks or Negroes in

the past? I submit that we don't. The real problem is not names at all,

but the imperiled status of black people that persists from one age to

the next, from one "acceptable" term to another.

That's acknowledged in the fact that, controversy notwithstanding,

nobody today quibbles with the names of advocacy groups such as the

National Council of Negro Women. In his civil rights rhetoric, the Rev.

Luther King Jr. repeatedly infused "the Negro" with urgency and

even poetry, turning the isolation and alienation of the phrase into a

powerful part of his argument for racial inclusion. Black leaders

before him did the same thing with the often pejorative "the colored

man." But that was then, and this is now: "Negro" is officially the

last of the oppressor appellations, and for many people it's past time

to retire it for good.

And so here we are in 2010. May I suggest that we count black folks any

way that makes sense and turn our national attention to the big racial

issues that really matter? Though it's interesting to note that when

the 2000 census allowed people to check more than one racial category

-- in a nod to mixed-race folks who objected to being identified as

black only -- it fueled concerns among blacks/African Americans/Negroes

that our numbers would diminish as our lines of demarcation blurred.

Whatever you think about "Negro," whom it refers to is abundantly clear.

Aubry Kaplan is a contributing editor to Opinion.http://www.latimes. com/news/ opinion/commenta ry/la-oe- kaplan8-2010feb0 8,0,7157375. story