Names
Sam Aurelius Milam III
I
used to think of myself as an American, but I'm not so sure what that means
anymore. After all, America isn't the name of a nation or even of
a society. It's the name of a continent. The nation is the
United States of America. That is, the nation is located on
a continent called America. So, Mexicans and Canadians, while not
citizens of the nation, can still call themselves Americans. Eskimos,
Paiutes, and all of the different kinds of people on this continent can
call themselves Americans.
That
still isn't quite right. To the southeast of the Isthmus of Panama,
there's another entire continent that has just as much claim to the name
as this one does. South America. North America. Two continents.
Two Americas. Some people might even add Central America, although
it isn't a separate continent. Whatever the case, people in Colombia,
Peru, even Argentina, all have as much right to call themselves Americans
as do the people in Washington, D.C. The nation shouldn't have been
called the United States of America, USA. It should have been called
the United States of North America, USNA, or maybe even the United States
of the Middle Part of North America, USMPNA. Not even that.
Consider all of the Indian nations that are scattered around the middle
part of the continent. Maybe the nation should have been called the
United States of Most of the Middle Part of North America, USMMPNA.
I'm an American? So is everybody from Ellesmere Island to Tierra
del Fuego. Given enough diversity, a term can lose its meaning.
Forget
about me, what about black people? They have as much right as I do,
or as anybody else from Ellesmere Island to Tierra del Fuego does, to call
themselves Americans, but they don't. They call themselves African
Americans. An African American, as I understand the term, is a person
who lives in the USA (or whatever) but whose recent ancestors came from
Africa. Mine came from Europe so, if I used the same rules of nomenclature,
I could call myself a European American, but I don't. It would
be a silly thing to do, because the genealogy of Europeans is diverse.
Nobody knows for sure where all of an Englishman's ancestors came from,
or an Italian's, or a German's. Besides that, a lot of our information
about our ancestry depends on the testimony of the mothers. That
testimony can be unreliable. Sometimes, even the mothers don't know
for sure who the fathers were. Tsk-tsk!
So,
African Americans are people who live in the USA, or the USMPNA, or whatEVER,
and whose ancestors came from Africa. Looking at my little globe,
I can see that Africa's a big place. Does it matter which part of
Africa their ancestors came from? Zimbabwe, Botswana, Egypt?
What? Egypt? Well, damned if Egypt isn't in Africa. So
far as I'm aware, people on this continent who have Egyptian ancestry don't
refer to themselves as African Americans. I don't think that they
even refer to themselves as Egyptian Americans. Or, maybe they do.
Please forgive my ignorance.
I
might be wrong about this and, if so, then I apologize for my ignorance,
but my perception is that the ancestors of black people came from Sub-Saharan
Africa, and not from the northern part of the continent. If I'm correct,
then just for the sake of avoiding confusion, maybe the actual African
Americans ought to start making a distinction between themselves and the
Egyptian Americans. They could call themselves Sub-Saharan African
Americans. Then, instead of the NAACP (for example), they could have
the National Association for the Advancement of Sub-Saharan African Americans,
NAASSAA. Sorta sounds like a space agency, doesn't it? What
about Sub-Saharan African Americans whose ancestors came from South Africa,
not the southern part of the continent but from the actual nation.
They'd have to call themselves Sub-Saharan South African African Americans.
They could have the NAASSSAAA, a bigger space agency. Speaking of
South Africa, the nation, what's the deal with the name Afrikaners?
They're people who live in South Africa, the nation, but whose ancestors
came from Europe. Why don't they call themselves European Africans?
Beats me. Given the usage Afrikaners, maybe the Indians (the
ones here, not the ones in India) should call all of us white people Amerikaners.
We live in America but our ancestors came from Europe, sort of
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