It's impossible for anyone now living to remember a time when the term didn't exist!
You really don't know what I mean? I mean that people didn't use these terms. Nobody did.
I was a part of the Counterculture, including Civil Rights, and I was an undergrad in an Afro-American Studies class when this
new term was carefully explained. I don't mean it had never seen print, somewhere, at some time. I mean it was settled on and promoted as the preferred term-- in exactly the same way leaders of the Movement came to a pretty solid concurrance that
Negro ought to be scrapped in favor of
black.
Classes like the one white kids like me signed up for in universities all across the country were offered by Afro-American Studies programs, and these sprung up all at once and in great profusion-- they were part of an ongoing effort to make terms like Afro-American (
and "black," let's not forget) part of the mainstream vocabulary.
The idea was that if you can change what people say, you can change what they think-- and the goal was to fight bigotry. To some degree this approach works-- but I have lived long enough to see its limitations and to sense the threat of backlash-- and so have you.
These departments and programs didn't exist until the very end of the 60s. Until then well-meaning and respectful people, including Civil Rights activists, had only one term of respect for people of African descent-- Negroes. Oh, and "colored people," which was also dropped and disregarded-- only to be resurrected as "people of color" when it became obvious that the term had filled a need.
I defy you to find a single instance, in writing or speech, where Martin Luther King
ever said "Afro-American"-- much less "African-American."
That goes double for Malcolm X, who championed the use of
black instead of
Negro, and was definitely a pioneer in that regard.
.
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