African-Ameri….um….
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National Review had this gem in last issue’s The Week:
If you think you can’t use the word “black,” and must use “African-American” instead, you may find that you can’t talk straight.
At the 2002 Winter Olympics, an American woman won a gold medal in the bobsled. She was the first black woman ever to win a gold medal in the Winter Games. But NBC, the network covering the Games, had no way of conveying this fact to its viewers. An announcer was reduced to saying, “She’s the first African-American woman from any country to win the gold medal.” In the American media, Nelson Mandela has been called “the first African-American president of South Africa.” Students have written that Othello was “African-American.” And so on.
The latest comes from The New Republic, whose review of a biography of Booker T. Washington began this way: “Once the most famous and influential African American in the United States (and probably the world), Booker T. Washington . . .” Surely the writer meant that Washington was probably the most famous and influential black man in the world. And there is nothing wrong with saying so, for, as we used to say in a bygone era, “black is beautiful.”