HAVE YOUR SAY
VOTE in the following polls and then click the results to see how people are voting on the issue.
WHAT ARE YOU CHECKING ON THE CENSUS?
DID YOU CELEBRATE KWANZAA IN 2009?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION ON FACEBOOK
Leave a Reply
Share the conversation…
I do agree with the previous comments. My late grandmother often referred to us all on these shores as Americans. In her time, many from the Caribbean were also referred to as Americans due to the fact they were born on the continent which includes the Americas. This country and many others I would guess, have miseducated us. I have often taken issue with the question and answers given. In the US, historically, when asked, “What is your nationality”, we answered with our race and that was considered the correct answer. Race and nationality are two different things. I can be black (my race) and born & raised anywhere in the world. I got into trouble with my 4th grade teacher in the sixties when asked this question. As early as 4th grade, I understood the difference. She asked me, “Were you born in Barbados?” My answer was “no”. Her response was “then you are a Negro”. My response was, “but the question was “what is your nationality?” My grandparents on both sides of my family came here from Barbados. I asked her (and she got real angry at me), “why is it okay for my friend Gary Mello to check off Irish and he was not born in Ireland?” He was born in the same hospital I was born in a few days earlier, but he can be Irish with no problem, but when I said I’m a Barbadian, it became a major issue/explosion for the teacher. Sad part about this, most of us accept this misdesignation put on us by someone else.
The whole confusion is the result of the miseducation implemented in the U.S. as far as geography goes. People in the U.S. have been taught that America is only the territory which refers to the United States when in fact the American continent is the land mass from Alaska to Tierra de Fuego which is located at the southern tip of South America. The appropriate term to define the U.S. in the world map should be UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA or simply THE UNITED STATES. There is no historical fact where the name America was only reserved for the United States. The entire continent in which we live today was given the name America in honor of Italian navigator and cartographer Amerigo Vespuci and according to history it was not given exclusively to a country in what was known as the New World. Therefore any person of African descent born in any part of this continent known as America is an African-American and it shouldn’t be a term just reserved for people of African descent born in the United States. Citizens of the United States to be specific should identify themselves as United States citizens because in order to be called American citizens we would have to be under one flag, one government, and the national borders all over the continent would not be in existance and all of us born in the Americas would have the same passport but that is not the reality today.