No Straw Men

Published in the Spectator (Hamilton College), January 30, 2004, and in the Observer-Dispatch (Utica, NY), January 17, 2005 (noted on the Hamilton College Web site).

Asked to describe a person with black skin, most people would reflexively call him an African-American. But not all black Americans come from the African continent—many are Haitians and Jamaicans—and relatively few today actually grew up there. Race does not necessarily follow geography. Additionally, many people native to Africa are white, like the settlers whose ancestors have been there for centuries, or brown, like the Arab tribes in the north.

Therefore, we should not interchange African-American (an American raised in Africa or who retains African customs or mores) with black (a person with black skin). Self-identity is important, but objectivity is imperative.

In fact, let’s not even refer to people by their superficial and divisive skin color. Let’s just identify people, of all colors, by their individual traits, by what Martin Luther King Jr. once called the “content of their character.”