I’m from Home

In African-Americans the concept of group identity is more related to family origin than to the place of birth and the contribution of the African-American group in American history. The United States was build by immigrants; therefore, according to Aisha Harris in her article  “Where I’m From,” it is usual to find kids saying that their grandparents “had come to America at some point from Ireland, or Italy, or Greece.” Nevertheless, we do not label those kids as Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans or Grecian-Americans, but as White. Unlike White kids with foreign descents, Black kids are labeled with their ancestral origin by calling the Black kids African-Americans.

A lot of African-Americans cannot relate to their ancestry from Africa because, as stated by Harris, their ancestors “were brought here against their will and any records of their origins had long since been lost.” Therefore, most African-Americans are just Americans or Black. According to Harris, she is African, genetically speaking, because her father took an ancestry DNA test that traced his roots to Nigeria. Nevertheless, Harris does not consider herself “Nigerian-American, or even African-American. Where I’m from is America—who I am is a black American.”

African-Americans should not be identified with their ancestral origins because the culture of Blacks from Africa is different from the culture of Blacks from America. Some Black Americans do not speak the same language as Africans from the same place of their ancestors. Examples to follow are the Caribbean islands, which mostly are composed of people of ancestry from Europe and Africa; however, after mixing and lost on the track of the origin of their ancestry, everyone is called the same. for instance, Cubans are not Cubans of African descent or Cubans of European descent, but Cubans.

Nicholas Payton in his article called “I Ain’t African-American, I’m Black: Nicholas Payton,” provides his definition of an African-American. According to Payton, “Anyone who moves to America from Africa and receives U.S. citizenship is African-American.” He is black because “Black, like White, is not a skin color, it’s a term of cultural identification. It [identity] has to do with how you are perceived in this world and where you fit in. Being African-American is a label, being Black has to do with acceptance.” Additionally, Payton implies that is not necessary to be a descendant of slaves in the United States to be African-American, that indeed is possible to be White and be an African-American. People who come from Africa and become citizens of The United States are the real African-Americans. Payton explains that the actress Charlize Theron is an African-American who is White but comes from Africa, Moreover, Payton makes the comparison between Charlize Theron and the Black actress Viola Davis, where Charlize is more African-American than Viola Davis because Davis is only related to the American culture.

What differentiates an African-American from a Black American, according to Payton, is that Black Americans are part of the construction of the United States and have “cultural ties to slavery and the racial oppression of pre-civil rights America.” Therefore, Payton along with Morgan Freeman find the Black History Month “ridiculous” because there is not a White History Month, which by its absence implies that Black History is not “American History,” but “African-American History.”

Works Cited

Bhopal, Raj S., Migration, Ethnicity, Race, and Health in Multicultural Societies. 2nd ed. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford UP, 2014. 75-76. Print.

Harris, Aisha. “Why I’d Rather Be Called a Black American Than an African-American.” Slate.com. Slate, 29 July 2014. Web. 01 Mar. 2015.

Payton, Nicholas. “I Ain’t African-American, I’m Black : Nicholas Payton.” Nicholas Payton. WordPress.com, 26 Feb. 2012. Web. 01 Mar. 2015.