A black African American
… I guess as opposed to the Elon kind of African American?
Afrikaner American?
Afrikkkaner American?
Lmao, that’s great
… or perhaps like Egyptian immigrants
… or black English immigrants
I mean, elmo is technically (South) African American and white as snow
#justmuricathings
“African American” is such a weird subset of people. Like, aren’t all humans from Africa? Then why is this term used only for black people?
Or do they mean to specify the African diaspora caused by the slave trade? But then aren’t we wrongfully including people who moved freely on their own to the US, and those that may even come from other regions?
I get that the word is basically a synonym for black people but with less attached prejudice. I’m just sad that we live in a world where that prejudice still exists.
The term and all the other -american prefixes has always weirded me out. It feels othering with a veil of progressiveness. I often find US progressives almost loop back around to enacting segregation again
It’s unintentional, I never supported segregation
Tbf, just using the term “American” can sometimes leave out important context. Cuz of white defaultism.
In certain places in the world, the term “American” usually gets the image of a white person in their mind, sometimes black people, but an Asian person is never in their mind. So like, if you are like on the internet, and you don’t say “Asian American”, people usually just assume you look like some white hillbilly in the US south.
If I’m running for office or at a polling place or if, god forbid, ICE shows up, I’m just “American”, but if racial conflict is involved like if Covid and Anti-Asian hate crimes is the topic, then leaving the “Asian” part out of “Asian Americans like me are being targeted in a wave of hate crimes” would result in a meaningless sentence.
It all depends on context.
The left broadly still tip-toes so gingerly around any group or ethnicity that they trip all over each other to make sure nobody feels excluded, and ends up making an environment that feels so much like walking on eggshells that nobody wants anything to do with it other than kids who want to earn performative inclusivity badges.
I got very burned out when I was more active in a few groups and half of every meeting was just qualifiers and disclaimers instead of organized action. And in the intervening years it’s gotten worse as we’ve lost more ground.
I get we need to have solidarity for people who don’t have a voice, but I’m not sure our species broadly knows how to turn that into an actionable strategy that doesn’t push away the very people we need on board, the tuned-out, short-attention-span masses who still equate leftist activism with some south park stereotype.
Covering all the bases 😀
Props to him, but the text on the shirt is a little forced.
“evil” would had sufficed.
I thought exactly that. Opened the post, upvoted this thread.
However couldn’t not Google it, and it may be on purpose.
evilness
noun
evil·ness
: the quality of being evil : badness
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evilness
While it does sound better with just “evil”, I wonder if they wished to exactly convey that what is being created is the quality of being evil in some people. All in all, that goes under the umbrella of evil, sure. But if we replace “evilness” with “badness”, it no longer sounds worse than the alternative, just “inequality creates bad”. Ofc you can’t compare directly like that, I’m just trying to make the point that black civil activist haven’t historically been that bad at language use, so perhaps we’re just feeling the more colloquial version but that this may be prescriptively better, idk.
I’m no languinolologist.
Evilitude?
That’s more of a neologism, whereas “evilness” veers more toward the archaic.
Badness sounds even worser
Yeah, but not worse than just “bad”, whereas “evilness” sounds worse compared to just “evil.”
My point is that it might not the most colloquial of English use, but MLK Jr didn’t exactly speak vernacular either.
So just because something sounds a tad off doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong. And in a lot of cases it’s the opposite, because languages just keep evolving.
A black African-American person of colour, no less!
A black African American, as opposed to white African American
That’s technically true but I think if you called him African American he’d go apeshit
I can’t imagine a conversation where he wouldn’t sound apeshit.
YES!
Let’s all refer to him as an African immigrant every time he’s mentioned, cause all immigrants are bad right? What’s good for the goose…
How about we just not refer to him at all?
This would hurt him the most.
I’ve known South Africans that were white and definitely referred to themselves as white African American.
You have a point but like… African American also means something different rather than the generic formula of (former country) (current country)
Have you ever seen an algerian
Are they a specific ethnicity in the United States defined generally by ancestral chattel slavery, because that’s the primary use of the term
An algerian. From the country. Algeria.
That’s in northern Africa.
And they white as hell. So the distinction of black african american isn’t too weird.
You do have a point. I also have a point but yours is enough of a point that arguing more is gonna feel silly.
So… Do I win?
Elon
Sorry someone beat you to it
Ha. Probably within a few seconds.
Yep lmao
I’ll never forget when a American tourist told my friend that he’s glad to meet another African American, and my friend said: mate, i’m swiss
I’m gonna start bringing a portable clothes iron around to get out the creases from activist flags, it’s not a huge deal but it just always irks me a little. Their image would be even more impressive with a nice creaseless flag.
The cheap, thin nylon is incredibly easy to melt. I buy a new, thick Pride flag every June for my house as the old one is tattered and faded by then. Usually run it through the steam dryer 2-3 times and then hang it out on a nice hot day, and the wrinkles relax. An iron is easy to overdo it with as I learned with a cheap Trans Pride flag one year.
there must be some sort of temperature setting on most irons that can handle delicates.
but yeh the fold wrinkles do stand out.
though not more than the half assed gear the gestapo is wearing.
if it makes him happy!
“Evilness”?
Whether or not the grammar is technically correct he makes a good point.
That word struck me too, but it’s in the dictionary and apparently it’s from Old English “yfelnes”.
Yeah I thought it was just “evil”.
It’s on Merriam webster site as a word, what’s your question?
It sounds weird and I don’t get why “Evil” wouldn’t be a better fit. But then, English is my second language, so maybe you could enlighten me?
Love the pearl clutching from the “let’s go Brandon” crowd.
I just wanna know what company is making all these flags…
The same ones that sell the “back the blue” flags.
I saw a flag seller in 2020 with a pole flying Trump, Biden, Jolly Roger, USSR, Bass Pro Shop, Weimar Germany, My Little Pony, ACAB, they are the true centrists of our time.
Can’t really blame the guy. Being a flag seller was his lifelong dream and nobody buys flags like ideologies.
FDT
Gayau!
lemmy when someone makes a performative display of resistance online: 😄😁👍
lemmy when someone makes a display of resistance IRL (the person is Black): 😡😒👎🏻
?
look at the comments under this post, they’re full of animosity and snark towards that person
compare them to any post negative of ICE on this platform and you won’t see that same energy
I see only one directed towards that person, sort of, and it’s heavily downvoted.
70% are complaining about the title.
African American? Did they or their parents recently immigrate from Africa? Are they invested in African politics? Do they at least adopt some form of African cultural identity? Otherwise, they are just Americans.
Elon Musk is more of an African American than people judged by the color of their skin given how much he has tried to push his own agendas regarding South Africa onto this administration.
you know what “African-American” means, stop being obtuse, you just sound ridiculous
My beef is with Americans saying “I am an X American” when what they really mean is “I try to LARP as X at times in whatever my American bubble says they do”. But specially with African American. It’s black. Black. Black. Say it with me. Black. No negative connotation (except people’s own insecurities), just a simple oversimplified label like any other of its sort.
We all know what people mean by it; they mean “black” but are scared to say it for whatever reason.
I think criticism of the term “African-American” is valid. Most black people in America today have never been to Africa.
oh absolutely, i’ve seen enough criticism of that term from Black people (americans or not) to know not to use it.
still, pretending to not know what it means just to push a half-baked message about racial colorblindness is… why. why would you do this. the elon musk shit on top of it, why
Just pretending to be an obtuse moron instead of taking a comment as the criticism it is shows your shit riling instincts at work, not the validity of my criticism. Also, learn some proper capitalization, it makes your comment look like it sounds.
Elon Musk is more of an African American than people judged by the color of their skin
If Musk was truly a first generation African American, he’d have been deported already.
He has the White-Pass
