Race Talk

A MINORITY VIEW

BY WALTER WILLIAMS

RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2009

What to call black people has to be confusing to white people. Having been around for 73 years, I have been through a number of names. Among the polite ones are: colored, Negro, Afro-American, black, and now African-American. Among those names, African-American is probably the most unintelligent. You say, "What do you mean, Williams?" Suppose I told you that I had a European-American friend or a South-America-American friend, or a North-America-American friend. You'd probably say, "Williams, that's stupid. Europe, South America and North America are continents consisting of many peoples." You might insist that I call my friend from Germany a German-American instead of European-American and my friend from Brazil a Brazilian-American rather than a South-America-American and my friend from Canada a Canadian-American instead of a North-American. So would not the same apply to people whose heritage lies on the African continent? For example, instead of claiming that President Barack Obama is the first African-American president, it should be that he's the first Kenyan-American president. In that sense, Obama is lucky. Unlike most American blacks, he knows his national heritage; the closest to a national heritage the rest of us can identify is some country along Africa's gold coast...

It seems to me that people are not remembering, let alone applying, the statement by Dr. King that people be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. The other thing about this is the hyphenated Americanism taking place today. I am an AMERICAN! John Wayne has an excellent dialog about this. I highly recommend that eveyone find this and listen to it.