Please explain your response in full, as it appears to assume that someone's life is anything but productive?! Your respectful and enlightening comments are welcome in our discussion.
Thank you for asking. I'm actually a black woman. I went from being a black baby, black teen and black adult, only to have a label, African America, forced onto me. I do not refer to myself as African American. I still love the label 'black' and will carry it with me as a symbol of pride, no matter how many negative references accompany it. I do love Africa, as my husband is from there. He is Nigerian so our children are Nigerian Americans. My husband would never refer to himself as African, as it would be like the English (or British) calling themselves European. This is just not a preferred practice internationally. He and I feel that placing a prefix of African onto black Americans is too vague and artificial. It's like a crude game of 'pin the tail on the donkey' by way of attaching us to a continent based solely upon the color of our skin or features, which can be misleading from a genetic standpoint. Also, no one ever refers to Libyans or Egyptians as African. Africa is an extremely large and diverse continent and not a country as many Americans think. Calling black people African not only only fails to address our individual country of origin within the continent, but it neglects the blood of other races which we know flows through all of our veins. Black Americans are no longer a pure race (nor is my Nigerian husband since his country was also colonized by other nations) so we should accept our black heritage, but should not turn our backs on our white, Indian (I've met Indians in Arizona who refer to themselves as such so I don't mean to be offensive), Latino, Asian and possibly other bits of our cultural heritage. I've met blood relatives of mine who would pass as white, my Great-grandmother's name was Greenleaf, and both she and her granddaughter (my biological mother) have yellow skin and regarding my children, one was blessed with the most beautiful chocolate complexion and the other was blessed with beautiful yellow skin which acculturates back and forth when in the sun. I was blessed with beautiful brown skin which differs from my biological parents and children, so there are many traits at play within my family. We are like many other black Americans are beautifully complicated array of colors. I would assume that if white Americans were classified as European American than it would also neglect the wonderful cultures of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, France, Germany, Norway, Finland and one of my favorite countries, Holland. It would be too easy and perhaps callous to term all white people as simply European. My Chinese friends never call themselves 'Asian' and I understand this. Luckily, there's technology to get each of us closer to determining our nation of origin through genetic testing, but unfortunately, many people are hung up on the DYI technology highlighted in this article where you simply place 'Crisco, fix-a-flat, beef-fat or other fillers into a diabetic syringe and inject the product into your face. There are so many sad stories like the one above. I'm enjoying the comments and the open dialogue! Thanks goes to the host for the opportunity to discuss.
Respectfully, any women who has placed a hint of cosmetics onto their faces could be accused of altering their appearance. Therefore your comment casts the majority of women on the planet as being of "self-hating" and lacking of "average human intelligence", which I truly disagree with. Most cultures alter their appearance in some way or another, the issue here is with the degree of alteration. We've seen this behavior with Chinese foot binding, Victorian Corsets, colored contact lenses, arsenic face powder, etc. I would hope that our goal as a society is to push towards self-acceptance of our own unique beauty which will decrease the desire to go to extremes such as shown above. We also need to understand that these extreme cases might very well be compounded with a mental disorder.
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