{"id":35939,"date":"2014-02-24T20:24:33","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T20:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=35939"},"modified":"2014-02-24T20:24:33","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T20:24:33","slug":"whats-in-a-name-mixed-biracial-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=35939","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a name? ‘Mixed,’ ‘biracial,’ ‘black’"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s in a name? ‘Mixed,’ ‘biracial,’ ‘black’<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Cable News Network<\/a> (CNN)
\n2014-02-19<\/p>\n

Martha S. Jones<\/strong><\/a>, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Associate Professor of History
\nUniversity of Michigan<\/em><\/p>\n

(CNN) — When the census listed Negro as a race option in 2010, a controversy erupted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My students at the University of Michigan were eager to denounce the term’s use: “Negro? It has to go!”<\/p>\n

To their ears, “Negro” was derogatory, too close in tone to the other, more infamous n-word. I played devil’s advocate, to test their thinking: “But some black elders still self-identify as Negroes.” “It’s preferable to its predecessor, colored.”<\/p>\n

“Don’t some of you belong to the National Council of Negro Women chapter?”<\/p>\n

I could not shake their thought.<\/p>\n

I was confronting a generational divide. For my grandmother, “Negro” was a term of respect. To my students, it was an epithet…<\/p>\n

…My CNN essay “Biracial and also black<\/a>” generated a debate about the words we use to describe African-Americans. I called myself mixed-race, a phrase that includes identities rooted in multiple races.<\/p>\n

Another term, biracial, some readers pointed out, assumes one identity borne out of two. It is, perhaps, too narrow for a discussion about identity in the 21st century.<\/p>\n

Some readers also rejected the phrase “African-American,” deeming it awkward and inaccurate. Renee wrote: “We are not from Africa, I was born here in the U.S. I don’t know anyone there, can’t even say my ancestors are from there.”…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s in a name? ‘Mixed,’ ‘biracial,’ ‘black’ Cable News Network (CNN) 2014-02-19 Martha S. Jones, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Associate Professor of History University of Michigan (CNN) — When the census listed Negro as a race option in 2010, a controversy erupted. My students at the University of Michigan were eager to denounce the term’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,8,394,20],"tags":[9447,3142,16971],"class_list":["post-35939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-cable-news-network","tag-cnn","tag-martha-s-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}