Classificatory Systems: African-American Nomenclature

Nigger, colored, Negro, Aframerican,²³⁶ Black, Afro-American, African American – these are some of the terms that members of this specific we-group have used to refer to themselves within the comparatively short period of about 150 years, usually with some overlap and fierce debates about capitalization and the use of the hyphen. The labels indeed sometimes changed from one generation to the next as Robert Stepto’s autobiographical information reveals: “[…] my grandfather (born 1885) preferred the term ‘colored.’ Many people born after him preferred the term ‘Negro’ and insisted that Negro be spelled with a capital ‘N.’ That preference spilled over into my era: on my birth certificate I am listed as ‘Negro’ (I was born in 1945).”²³⁷

These numerous shifts in the classificatory system mirror the constant social and political changes in 20^th-century African-American history. Language in this context

236 During the 1920s there was a brief effort to launch the term “Aframerican.” It was supposed to be an alternative to the term “Afro-American,” insisting on fusing the terms “African” and

“American” without hyphens or spaces in between. For further information see Clare Corbould, Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919-1939 (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 2009): 217-218.

237 Robert B. Stepto, Personal Email Correspondence (September 22, 2009).

8. African-American Language Identity on Stage 138

serves as a “sensitive seismograph of social crises,”²³⁸ due to the fact that questions of labeling are also questions of how to use language in society and, thus, questions of social politics in a broader context. The imposition of labels is always also a question of power politics between those who label and those who are labeled. As Sabine Wierlemann points out: “Language change and social change often accompany each other and may not be clearly separated from each other.”²³⁹ Even if language change is usually not controllable, it may nevertheless be influenced or fostered by human action. Incisive events such as political movements, revolutions, and changes in the political system are usually accompanied by a change in the social consciousness that often includes a change in language usage.

In the context of African-American identity formation it was especially the political and social developments during the 1960s and 1970s which fostered a strong sensitivity for the linguistic representation of black Americans in public discourses. Black America’s resistance to the imposed labels “nigger” and “Negro” indicated the increasing force of the Black Power Movement to revolt against the inferior position of black Americans in segregated America. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King, Jr., listed linguistic devaluation as one of the reasons why black Americans were no longer willing to wait for a change in society in 1963:

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” […] But […] when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; […] when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” – then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.²⁴⁰

238 Sabine Wierlemann, Political Correctness in den USA und in Deutschland (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2002): 20. My translation. The full quotation in the original reads: “Sprachkritik kann als empfindlicher Seismograph gesellschaftlicher Krisen beschrieben werden.“

239 Wierlemann, Political Correctness in den USA und in Deutschland: 29. My translation. In the original: “Sprachgebrauchswandel und gesellschaftliche Veränderungen gehen oft Hand in Hand und sind nicht immer klar voneinander zu trennen.“

240 Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait (New York: Signet Books, 1964): 81-82.

In contrast to Ralph Ellison’s invisible man who finally falls silent and conforms to his

“nobodiness,” King wanted to put an end to the black people’s endurance of being put into a subordinate position. He expressed indignation at the fact that black women, men, and children were not adequately addressed as individuals with proper names. By giving them pejorative generic names such as “boy” and “John” they were stripped of their unique individuality, becoming all alike and forming an unspecified group of “niggers.”

King’s rejection of “nigger” ran almost parallel to Malcolm X’s revolt against the label “Negro.” Still common as a designation for black Americans during the 1960s and 1970s, it was finally turned into a taboo word, considered old-fashioned and offensive today.²⁴¹ In a speech to the people of Harlem in a public meeting on January 24, 1965 Malcolm X argued that the term “Negro” was deliberately used to damage African-American identity:

One of the main reasons we are called Negro is so we won’t know who we really are. And when you call yourself that, you don’t know who you really are. You don’t know what you are, you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know what is yours. As long as you call yourself a Negro, nothing is yours.²⁴²

Similar to King, Malcolm X pointed out that imposed labels had a negative influence on the quality of black Americans’ self-understanding, blocking the formation of African-American identity in general. In his speech he aimed at raising his audience’s awareness of this destructive force of imposed labels.

In Alice Childress’s Wine in the Wilderness (1969) the character Bill pursues a similar aim in teaching the female character Tommy how to speak ‘properly’ about black Americans. Telling the other characters about her experiences during the Harlem Race Riot she repeatedly uses the term “nigger,” which causes Bill to interrupt her:

T^OMMY (suddenly remembers her troubles) Niggers, niggers … niggers, … I’m sick-a niggers, ain’t you? A nigger will mess up everytime… Lemmie tell you what the niggers done …

241 There was a fierce controversy about the use of the term “Negro” on the 2010 US census form (cf. Katie Mcfadden and Larry Mcshane, "Use of Word Negro on 2010 Census Form Raises Memories of Jim Crow," New York Daily News January 6, 2010.)

242 Malcolm Little, Malcom X on Afro-American History (New York, NY: Pathfinder Press, 1982): 15.

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B^ILL Tommy, baby, we don’t use that word around here. We can talk about each other a little better than that.

C^YNTHIA Oh, she doesn’t mean it.

T^OMMY What must I say?

BILL Try Afro-Americans.

TOMMY Well, … the Afro-Americans burnt down my house.

(WIW 742; italics original)

In this scene name change is presented as an act of education and an imposed substitution of one label with another. Tommy, a “woman factory worker” (WIW 738) who has not enjoyed a higher education, is a willing student who wants to learn from Cynthia, “a social worker” (WIW 738), and Bill, “an artist” (WIW 738). She does not question the correction of her speech but simply accepts the other characters’ authority. She immediately abandons the term “nigger” in her story and replaces it with the seemingly more appropriate term “Afro-American.”

Yet, this teacher-student-relation completely turns upside at the end of the play when the issue of correct or incorrect labeling comes up again in a scene in which Tommy accuses Bill of his bad and superior behavior towards her and towards the lower class of African Americans in general. In their quarrel she repeatedly addresses him as “nigger”

until Bill authoritatively stops her:

B^ILL (pulls dictionary from shelf) Let’s get this ignorant “nigger” talk squared away. You can stand some education.

TOMMY You treat me like a nigger, that’s what- I’d rather be called one than treated that way.

B^ILL (questions T^OMMY) What is a nigger? (talks as he is trying to find the word) A nigger is a low, degraded person, any low degraded person. I learned that from my teacher in the fifth grade.

T^OMMY Fifth grade is a liar! Don’t pull that dictionary crap on me.

B^ILL (pointing to the book) Webster’s New World Dictionary of The American Language, College Edition.

T^OMMY I don’t need to find out what no college white folks say nigger is.

B^ILL I’m tellin’ you it’s a low, degraded person. Listen (reads from the book) Nigger, N-i-g-g-e-r, … A Negro … A member of any dark-skinned people … Damn. (amazed by dictionary description)

(WIW 753-754; italics and emphasis original)

The controversy about the term “nigger” is in this scene directed towards the major question of who uses the term. The position of the speaker always carries connotations

which influence the meaning of a name or an expression so that Tommy points out:

“When they say ‘nigger,’ just dry-long-so, they mean educated you and uneducated me.

They hate you and call you ‘nigger,’ I called you ‘nigger’ but I love you” (WIW 754). It is now Tommy who is in the position to teach Bill about the different meanings of the term

“nigger,” dependent on its usage as an in-group or an out-group label. Accordingly, the term was regarded as insult when used by a white person after the Civil Rights Movement; when used by a black person, however, it might also be used “affectionately by one negro of another.”²⁴³

For both the characters on stage and the real audience attending the performance this scene in Childress’s Wine in the Wilderness turns into a lesson in the power politics of language and the question of labeling that is still with us today. The re-naming of Yale’s

‘Afro-American Studies Department’ as ‘African American Studies Department’ in 1992 exemplifies that the question of African-American nomenclature is still being discussed.

Robert Stepto, who participated in the process, explains that the re-naming process was completely an internal decision involving only the faculty of the department. According to him the only external pressure was the idea of “being up to date regarding what to call ourselves.”²⁴⁴

Until today there are different collective nouns in African-American identity discourse which are simultaneously used. While some people call themselves Blacks or black Americans, some prefer the terms Afro-American or African(-)American, identifying themselves with their ancestry by using a so-called hyphenated identity label.

Influenced by the 1990s discussions on Political Correctness, hyphenated identities have become a commonly accepted form of labeling, as “for a group brought to America as slaves and until very recently denied the rights of American citizens, this assertion of identity also represents a claim of the uprooted to historical roots (‘African’) and of the historically unequal to fully equality (‘American’).”²⁴⁵ In the year 2000 the term “African American” was for the first time included in the United States Census form, marking its

243 Henry W. Fowler and Ernest Gowers, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1965): 391. For further information on ethnic labels see for example Jeff Greenberg, S.L. Kirkland and Tom Pyszczynski, "Some Theoretical Notions and Preliminary Research Concerning Derogatory Ethnic Labels," Discourse and Discrimination, eds. Geneva Smitherman-Donaldson and Teun A. van Dijk (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1988).

244 Robert B. Stepto, Personal Email Correspondence (September 26, 2009).

245 Deborah Cameron, Verbal Hygiene (London: Routledge, 1995): 145.

8. African-American Language Identity on Stage 142

official recognition. From a linguistic point of view the pattern [‘ethnic origin’ + – American] describes a uniform and thus non-discriminating determination for minority groups in the American society. Non-discrimination in this context refers to the idea of treating Mexican-American, Asian-American, Native-American, and other dual American identities alike. The hyphenated term is usually used respectfully, acknowledging an individual’s ethnic, regional, or cultural origin and ancestry which unites with his or her American citizenship. The hyphen is usually no longer seen as a cut creating “a divided American”²⁴⁶ but as a link between two cultural origins in America’s multicultural society.

Both the naming practices after slavery times and the development of the African-American classificatory system reveal that 20^th-century America has witnessed a gradual birth of cultural and social consciousness. This process, that reveals itself in a critical re-examination of language in plays by African-American female playwrights, also included discussions on the social status and value of African-American English (AAE).