African Americans: Black Or African American?

Black or African American? When you hear people talk about the black or African Americans’ what and whom do you think about? The “African American” portion sometimes reminds people of slavery, death, and racism. When people hear about “black” people, they think of a different kind of person; they think of a hard working person that has a family that has rebounded from tough times. However, these names can also be switched and can be known for bad things as well as any other person or certain race can be. Through good times and bad, I do not think “African American” is a term that means something different than the word “black”. There was a harsh time in America around 1619 when the Africans’ were brought to the Jamestown, Virginia colony, …show more content…
There is a lot of heritage here from the Indians and historic battles for the English taking over the Indians land. Sadly there is another showing of heritage that I wish we did not show. We have a lot of racial based violence with the Blacks and Whites; every day that I watch the news I hear about shootings or other violence going in and a lot of it they say is “racially charged”. So how can we get passed this? There are a lot of African American people that do not like being called “African American”, they feel that when they are called so, it brings a name that reminds everyone of slavery and times that were not good for them. They would much rather be called “Black”. Doing so, would maybe not bring up the past but would give them a fresh start because honestly, when I see a black person I always feel bad because I remember hearing just how severe they were treated and what they had to go through. Sometimes I feel that African Americans do cause more violence and it could possibly be from the way they were brought up. In a report by Michael Hausam, in 2011 there was 83 percent more black on black violence. How can we live with this? There must be something we can do. There is a substantial decrease in Caucasian violence. Could it be something that the White people are getting that the Blacks are not? I do not think we will ever get the answer to this so we must change and see where it takes us. It is possible that maybe The Black people just do not get along with other African American people but I highly doubt that. What Hausam thinks is that the name “African American” just brings a bad “wrap” to them and that “Black” will not do so. If this was the case, we should just call dark pigmented people Black instead of the other