re: Your mind will wrap itself in knots if you ponder the term 'African American'

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The term came about because white progressives a few decades back thought that the label of "black" was negative. Black is associated with darkness and evil in all societies. That needed to be fixed so they relabeled them as African Americans. True story.

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No, false, ignorant story. In the 1980's and 1990's, the population of people with recent Caribbean and African ancestry increased significantly, highlighting that we didn't have a word for those Americans with roots that dried up in the African diaspora. That's why the term African-American exists.

"Those people are Nigerians. Those people are Haitians. Those people...hmm...what we call those people in Harlem that doesn't start with n?"

That's where the term comes from. Amazing how willfully ignorant so many around here are. The term has a specific meaning for a specific purpose, and it doesn't mean the same thing as "black."