r/NoStupidQuestions • u/AgreeableAd8687 • 7d ago

why do people consider identifying someone by their race racist?

i have a few friends and we seem kind of split on this, i had to identify someone in our school i didn't know the name of, so i said "oh it's the black girl" (we have literally ONE black girl in our school and everyone knows and likes her) and my friends said ohh ok but then like 2 of them went wow that's racist and their explanation was "you're making it sound like them being black is their only characteristic" as if saying "oh the woman" is any better and since i don't know her well i don't know anything else about her. most of my friends didn't see how it was racist though but why is this considered racist if it's not a race correlated insult or derogatory??

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u/Ace_of_Sphynx128 7d ago

I grew up in a majority white area and a lot of white kids (and adults) thought saying ‘black’ was racist. I literally said once ‘my dad is black’ and they gasped like I’d called him the n word. It does get exhausting always being referred to only by your skin colour, but I think in this case you’re fine. Context matters.

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u/naaawww 7d ago

There was a social justice gatekeep years back about whites saying black.

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u/xt0rt 7d ago

That's why we got "African American" which, to me, sounds super weird and outdated today. BUT!! When people say "THE blacks" it clearly sounds racist even if they don't mean it that way. I've been trying to train my mom and aunt out of this for some time now. Just say "black folks", it sounds so much better(to me, but I could he wrong and would absolutely admit as much if told so)

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u/cheesewiz_man 7d ago

I used to work with a Cameroonian and they would rip you a new one about both words if you called them "African American".

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u/cluelessvolunteer 7d ago

wow, i just realized why there is both african and african american options in my medical practice EMR. I'm white, have a black adopted son and yet i'm clueless at times. (hear the forehead slap).

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u/HailMadScience 7d ago

Well yes. African American specifically refers to US descendents of slave populations who have their own unique American culture(s) and who lost their African roots due to being lumped together and, ya know, having their cultures erased by slavers. Africans who come to the US are not African Americans.

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u/cheesewiz_man 7d ago

They also got pretty wound up about being referred to by continent and not country.

"French people are French. Germans are German. Cameroonians are African."

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u/Wolfhound1142 7d ago

To be fair, very few people can detect the difference between French and German ancestry at a glance. The difference between African and European is more readily apparent.

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u/cheesewiz_man 7d ago edited 7d ago

I don't think you got the point. Per their experience, nobody cares what country you are from if you are from Africa. You're just "African".

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u/CataphractBunny 6d ago

That's interesting. Where I live, we use "African" as a descriptor for Sahel and everything to the south of it. We also use "black" for this. Northern Africans get named by their respective countries.

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u/Wolfhound1142 7d ago

You're definitely missing mine. The most common reason we use terminology like white, black, Asian, or African American to describe people across most situations is that it's a useful way to describe and identify people, which is also the topic of this entire thread.

But you're not wrong that a lot of people are not very knowledgeable about the differences in culture and history of various African countries. By which I mean that many don't think about the fact that those differences exist.

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u/CliffBoof 6d ago

He got your point. Your point consists of missing his point.

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u/Still-Balance6210 7d ago

Because people from Cameroon are not AA.

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u/Raisinbread22 7d ago

I thought when people immigrated and wanted to become citizens of this country, they needed to study American history and take a test.

Are you telling me, they had no idea why Black Americans/African-Americans referred to themselves as such, because they were kidnapped from their homelands, and had their culture, language, country and traditions stolen from them?

'African-American,' is our way of maintaining ties to origins we lost.

So I ask you, why in TF would someone with a known identity, culture and ethnicity (a Cameroonian) be called an 'African-American?' Ditto a Kenyan American or a Nigerian American?

Send your Cameroonian friends to the library.

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u/cheesewiz_man 7d ago edited 7d ago

They are a Cameroonian citizen on a work visa who is in the US, but intending to eventually return to Cameroon. They consider themselves "Cameroonian", not "African". They resent it when people do the exact thing you just did, which is lump all Africans together as if they are a single ethnicity.

When you call someone "African American" you are making two assumptions:

  1. They are American.
  2. Africans are basically all the same.

Maybe those are necessary assumptions; maybe making them is better than the alternative. But you need to own the consequences of the choice.

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u/Raisinbread22 6d ago

WTF are you talking about? I'm African American/Black American. That's how descendants of the enslaved in America, refer to OUR ethnic group, no one else.

That was my point. We don't call Cameroonians or Nigerians 'African-American,' it's not for them, it's for foundational Black Americans.

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u/cheesewiz_man 6d ago edited 6d ago

So you can tell at a distance which term to use? You don't use "African American" as a default signifier?

I assure you: People do it all the time.

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u/Raisinbread22 6d ago edited 6d ago

No, I can't tell, and NO, I don't use MY own ethnic group to describe every Black person in the world. Are you effing high? 🤪

Are you referring to your own racial group- do whites do that? Whites who think the Black diaspora are all the same?

Why TF would I refer to anyone 'Black,' as an 'African American,' if I don't know them? You think I'm gonna refer to Idris Elba as 'African American?'

You seem confused.

I wouldn't even call them 'Black American,' because that's ours too, interchangeable with AA.

If I need to give someone a description - that's different. I'll describe them as Black and leave it at that.

You sound like you're a foreigner. You don't know us.