Sociologists Study Evolution Of Name Identity Among Black Americans

WASHINGTON D.C. - In this age of political correctness, the term African American has long been accepted as the appropriate identifier of black individuals in conversation or print. But a new study from the University of Arkansas finds that journalists and scholars are lagging behind on this trend and even using archaic labels to describe black Americans.

The problem reflects a long history of confusion, says Magalene Harris Taylor, assistant professor of sociology - a history in which African Americans were long denied the ability to define themselves and their own identity.

With colleague Anthony Too Woart of Bluefield College in West Virginia, Taylor has been studying the evolution of name identity among African Americans, beginning in the 18th century. The two have been particularly interested in how names and labels have reflected the social, political and personal identities of blacks in the United States.

Woart and Taylor will present their study Saturday, Aug. 12, at the annual meeting of the Association of Black Sociologists.

"Every ethnic or racial group in America has some type of name identity associated with it," Taylor said. "But African Americans have more different labels than any other group - labels that they did not necessarily choose to identify themselves."

Tracking the evolution and use of these labels through history led Woart and Taylor to examine three sources. First, they consulted the U.S. Census - studying each form from 1870 forward to catalogue the various terms that the U.S. government had used to identify black Americans.

The researchers then turned their attention to the print media, specifically the New York Times and the Washington Post. Using a search program, Woart and Taylor calculated how often specific labels had been used in the paper throughout each decade since 1865. They tested for "colored", "Negro", "black", "Afro-American" and "African American."

They found that the terms "colored" and "Negro" dominated until as late as 1980, when "black" became the most commonly used reference term. The labels "Afro-American" and "African American" appeared in the New York Times as early as 1940, but neither term gained significant use. In 1999, the paper used "African American" ten times, compared to 1,149 uses of the term "black."

Furthermore, archaic labels lingered in the news media decades after the Civil Rights movement had deemed such terms derogatory. In 1985, the New York Times referred to African Americans as "colored" 31 times - down from 103 such references in 1980.

"It’s hard to look at these numbers, knowing that the print media plays such a tremendous role in shaping perceptions simply through the terminology they use to describe a group," said Taylor. "This is really indicative of the battle African Americans have fought to find respect."

Having examined the government and the public record, the researchers next turned to the academic world to see how scholars who studied racial issues chose to identify African Americans. Looking at the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Political Science and the American Political Science Review, Woart and Taylor again assessed the frequency with which certain terms were used.

Although "African American" appeared as early as 1940 in the American Political Science Review and as early as 1960 in the American Sociological Review, none of the journals made common use of the term until the 1990s. And even then, readers were still likely to find archaic labels popping up in some of the articles, said Taylor.

With such confusion evident even among present-day scholars, Taylor says it’s no wonder blacks have struggled so long to define themselves and to have their own identity accepted by the larger society.

Research has shown that social groups tend to identify themselves not only by common language or custom but also through name identity - self-imposed labels that, when used, reflect the common heritage and shared experiences of their social group.

In the case of black Americans, however, establishing name identity has been an evolutionary process, all too often complicated by externally-applied labels. Many of the terms used to describe African Americans throughout the past century were not self-selected, but were inflicted upon the group by a dominant white society, said Taylor.

The researchers list such derogatory terms as including darkie, coon, ape, monkey, mammy, jig, aunt/uncle, shine, sambo, girl/boy, mulatto, quadroon, doctor, reverend, p’fessa and blackie. Though these labels originated in the post-slavery and Reconstruction era, their use - and the stigma attached to them - lingered well into the 20^th century.

Part of the reason blacks were victims of such labeling was because the bondage they endured during slavery stripped them of their original identity, said Taylor. Slavery denied these people the opportunity to use and preserve their native culture including languages, foods, dress, religions and music. As a result, black Americans were forced to forge a new identity in a nation openly hostile to them.

The application of demeaning labels was slow to change. Until the 1960s, most African Americans suffered so much oppression that they had no voice, no say in the way they were characterized or labeled. Not until the advent of the Civil Rights movement did blacks experience their first sense of group pride, said Taylor.

Leaders like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and later Jesse Jackson not only gave African Americans a sense of pride and worth, but they gave them a vocabulary and a desire to define themselves rather than letting other people do it for them.

"That’s the turning point at which black people took hold of their own identity," Taylor said. "Once they began to feel pride and ownership for who they were, then they could decide what they wanted to be called. That’s when they began to control which labels were applied to them and what those labels meant."

Although the Civil Rights movement empowered African Americans to shape their own identity, Woart and Taylor have shown that the rest of the nation has been slow to catch up.

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