So, for my college speech course i have to do a 6-8 minute persuasive speech in the form of:

-Problems [3 good ones]
-Plan [which will solve said problems]
-Critical Response [eg rejoinders to what critics of said plan might say]

I have a number of ideas of my own, everything from citing an eggregiously absurd entry on a Black History Month flyer my campus circulated, to quotes from Washington, Graham-Bell, T.R, &c about the subject [yes it really has been debated that long]. My belief is essentially that hyphenation is not only unnecessary but often retroactive and potentially outright divisive.

However, i am very curious to learn of the views of y'all on said topic, particularly if you hold strong critical obejctions to my stance [so i can obejct to them in part 3 of course *evg*].

So, tally-ho. [And thanks for any insights and feedback].

Wooo! Dor!

Err... to be honest, I do't actaully know what you're going on about, but I do know that MS word keeps wanting me to hyphenate words I don't want to. Paper clip == DIE.

Funny you should say this. My Geometry teacher (just yesterday) was freaking out because he couldn't figure out what the heck to do for the exact same persuasive project. I think he went with persuading people to floss, since most people don't.

I agree with your point of view to an extent, and have always been irritated with the fact that much of the leadership on this particular issue have been fighting against "seperate but equal" for so long, yet they seem to adopt educational strategies that inspire division. While I do believe that people should embrace their differences, on this particular issue, this type of teaching is indeed retroactive, as you've stated.

I am of the firm belief that we're all of the human race, connected to one another despite the pigment of our skin, and that pride in the color of ones skin is disturbingly absurd. In other words, on this particular issue, I would agree that hyphenation is indeed what you claim it is.

Aye, I so agree with your stance. I'd probably go even more extreme to go as far to say that something like Black pride or Asian pride is just like the White power chants at the kkk rallies.

This is more cutting and less true than I intended it to be. Sorry.

A person derives the components of his amalgamated identity from the group identities he subscribes to. He demarcates his self by his political beliefs, by his appearance, by his attitudes, by his philosophy, by the people and products he likes, by the music he listens to.

The problem, to some people, is that all those things are affected. Everyone could do all the same things you do, cutting short your brief stint as a individual and turning your in-group into a much larger collection of ****ing trendies. You aren't special if everyone suddenly likes your favorite band. One of your identity reference points is suddenly subsumed, and one of those answers to "Who am I?" is now "I'm someone who likes x, much like everyone else".

So you get a lot of people who are pretty sure one of their grandparents was German, learn the language up to "wunderbar", and work out their fractional ethnic identity to the sixteenths. Their psychological need for a tribal group, a unique identifier, roots, whatever, something "more real" than the white bread suburban culture that they are actually rooted in, results in a embarressing stretch of association bordering on posturing.

This is obvious even to them. So then they get peeved at people who decide to partake in, or even, God forbid, take pride in a cultural identity which is an actual product of their childhood, family, and environment, much like their own suburban backgrounds except, you know, cooler. Like, say, Indian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans...

I'm politically incorrect and damn proud of it. So it will always be Black, Jewish, Italian, Asian, Mexican, White, Catholic, Protestant, Indian (Native), Handicapped, Blind, Deaf, what have you to me.

I'm with you there Dormouse. I've never liked the "-American." If you are a citizen of this nation, you are American.

Word.

up.

I recognize where you come from with that, Ictus, and am inclined to agree on parts of your analysis, however i am not [hopefully at least] coming at it from that position.

It is more from the position that [to abstract my basic points i intend to develop]:

-It is unnecessarily divisive, creating soemwhat arbitrary and sometimes imginary or wishful groupings. Take for instance a girl i know, who is utterly caucasian, born to utterly caucasian parents, who happens to have been born in South Africa, and as such is technically classed as African-American in terms of forms, scholarships, &c; here i could posit that in terms of African culture, South Africa is very much distinct and disjunct from what is traditionally considered African culture and heritage and such, however i must admit to some ignorance on the topic and would not forward it as prevaricable. Now admittedly that is a case of dual citizenship, where hyphenation may in fact be appropriate. However in the vast majority of cases, Adjetypal-Americans are not in fact of dual nationality and it is misleading.

Moreover, as you Ictus referenced, almsot never will you get references to German-Americans [anymore at least] or Polish-Americans or English-Americans, though there is some move towards adopting a dreadfullly vacuous European-Americans bracket. The fact that it is applied so selectively and somewhat arbitrarily alone is enough to suspect it of deserving serious reform, either by making everyone hyphenated and notable [in effect making /nobody/ notable], or by merely removing the convention altogether. This is particularly applicable in cases where the Adjetypal-Americans hold no real affinity or practice to their ascribed culture and heritage, yet are labelled as such as though it should mean something.

-It is often quite inaccurate, even offensively so. For instance the vast majority of people who tend to get hyphenated, i would venture haven't had ancestors in said motherland for hundreds of years, and don't necessarily hold a great affinity to said motherland, however have said labels ascribed to them. Here for example take some black people i have met who get aggravated if people refer to them as African-American, saying that theyre pure straight-up American. Alternately take cases where in the attempts to be politically correct one winds up seriously offending someone, for instance try referring to someone of Korean ancestry as Japanese-American. Here also i cite cases where attempts to be politically correct result in grievous misportrayals, viz the aforementioned BHM flyer wherein one of the notable dates was, and i quote [with possible date error]: "1619- First African-Americans arrive in America", which is offensively inaccurate and absurd on about five different levels.

-It institutes semantical and/or imposed disjunctions [tying in with the above two in various amounts of overlap]. Here we can look at things as simple as the semantics of Adjetypal-American putting 'American' second; this seems a very small and nitpicky distinction, however in a field where debates on "mailman" vs "mail carrier" or whether there is an e or a y in "women" are very hotly debated with far-reaching implications. Moreover, i could bring in quotations from Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, &c, along the lines of "sentiment towards the motherland is to be expected, however one's first and foremost loyalty must always lie to the United States".


Though, in response to your latter section, i do not hold that hyphenation is in any way required to take pride in one's nation of origin or practices which may have carried over from there, however virtually everything is going to be heavily influenced by Americana and to refer to it as though it were a pure tradtion derived from and sustained by the motherland would tend to be inaccurate at best. I myself am predominantly Irish and Scottish with a couple of ancestors of England and Novia Scotia respectively, however very rarely will i refer to myself as an Irish-American, despite its validity and pride i may take, although sometimes i will farcically call myself an Atlantic-Islander as opposed to the Pacific Islander bracket, this is very similar to how i would basically never refer to myself as a Protestant-American or Malthusian-American or any other creed or affiliation.
[This section is in part to ward off criticisms that i myself suffer from some sort of ethnicity envy and am doing this speech in order to take out my angst over that]

Hopefully this explains my stance and premises better.

I have wondered, what are the official scientific racial sub-catagories of homo sapien?

Caucasion is obviously one, but what are the others, and how many are there? Is 'negro' the official scientific term, or is there some other?

And if you start taking Kurdish, Persian, Arab as different races, then.. well, there's going to be loads of them.

Dormouse: People call themselves by the labels they want to. Goth, punk, African-American, black, white, one half Irish, urban, indie. Why do you object to only one of the above? Why does it make a difference if an author calls himself a black American instead of an African-American?

Mort: Wikipedia has an awesome article. There is no NPOV answer.

What i object to is not so much someone calling themselves that, for instance, as the pervasive incessant need people seem to have to refer to /other/ people as such.

Particularly in cases [as i mentioned several in my previous post] where it is just redundant nonce to make the speaker appear culturally sensitive or what-have-you [or those who feel they have to lest they offend someone], or where it is outright absurd, eg calling someone African-American who in fact is from Jamaica or suchlike. Or eg people who dislike being called Something-American because they feel it implies they are less of an American.

Moreover much of the time, it really has no bearing on the issue whatsoever, why this compulsion to identify the color of the person in the first place, human is human, there's more genetic variation within a given traditional Race than between them anyways, or on a lesser scale, American is American, why make unnecessary distinctions.

The problem with 'African-American', above that of 'goth', 'black', 'urban', 'indie' is that 'African-American' is simply illogical.

'Goth' stems loosely from 'gothic novels' of the 19th century, associating 'gothic' with horror and darkness, as medieveal architechture was labelled 'gothic' during the Renaissance because it was considered 'barbaric', that connotation becoming popular after the invasion of Italy by the Ostrogoths.

'African-American', however... doesn't make any sense at all. What possible use could any 'Continent-Nationality' combination have? As a nationality, they are American. As a race, they are negro (or whatever the more approrpriate word is, that article was interesting Ictus, but it didn't really answer that). 'Africa' has nothing to do with it.