Talk:African-American history

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 January 2019 and 1 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Marven215.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:33, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Names
"African-American" when used as an adjective is supposed to be hyphenated, as it is a compound adjective, as in "an African-American doctor". When it is a noun - "He is an African American." - it is not hyphenated. Parkwells (talk) 00:33, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Belatedly ✅ – Fayenatic  L ondon 09:30, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

African American History Research Paper.
The article that choose is a great start for me and my topic. This article takes me all the way back to 1619 where the first African slaves were brought to point comfort, today's Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. This creates a great starting point for my topic because this is one of the first places where it all began.Marven215 (talk) 20:06, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:African-American gospel which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:20, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Hyphens and African American
Should African-American be hyphenated in this article? The AP style guide has removed the hyphen this year in African American and other hyphenated dual identities.AP tackles language about race in this year’s style guide Columbia Journalism Review Should not Wikipedia follow this practice? I thought Wikipedia followed the AP style guide, but no? Such articles as the one on Barack Obama and virtually every other article using African America as a descriptor use the hyphen, including this one. Thanks, Krok6kola (talk) 13:30, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ where used as an adjective, see MOS:HYPHEN. – Fayenatic  L ondon 09:19, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

White supremacy, apologism and erasure
This article seems to protect if not promote white supremacy. It is rife with apologism, with constructions of whites as saviors, and with erasure of exactly what happened, why, and who was responsible. The purpose of this article should not be to protect the egos of white people. Nor should the article in any way reinforce notions that whites are superior to Black people, or that slavery, Jim Crow, systemic racism or ongoing racialized inequality have been inevitable or necessary.

I started off trying to cite specific examples but as I went through I realized almost every paragraph is hugely problematic. I can't do it all and it is not my job as a Black person to do all the work (contrary to what is implied in this article). So here are some comments on the beginning of the article. I hope they are instructive and eye-opening to those who write and edit this and similar articles. I have tried to use double quotes "" when citing the article, single quotes ′′ when paraphrasing and curved quotes «» when proposing alternatives.
 * Enslavement
 * African origins: Entire paragraph written in passive voice. As though it just inevitably 'happened'. WHO enslaved us, WHO sought particular groups of us, WHO forced us through the middle passage?
 * Regions of Africa: "sources" of slaves?? Because slaves are 'resources'?? Certainly such talk was standard at the time but that is no excuse for including it today. How about, those were our «homelands»?
 * Middle Passage: the single short paragraph of this subsection is practically apologist, 'there were black people in the US before institutionalized slavery' or 'it's not slavery's fault' and especially 'it's not white people's fault, black people did it first'. (1) this is clearly not the most important part about the middle passage. (2) how come white slavers are not named but the "few countries in Africa" are singled out as responsible???
 * Transport: same passive voice issues as african origins subsection
 * Early Af-Am history
 * introductory subsection:
 * "Africans assisted the Spanish and the Portuguese during their early exploration of the Americas" - just like that huh? just up and woke up one day, 'Hey I think I'll go help these white saviors colonize the Americas' - (1) this needs a LOT more explanation, (2) how is this the start of the Early History section?
 * how is everything written so timidly? "In 1619, the first African slaves were brought to Point Comfort on a Dutch slave ship, today's Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, 30 miles downstream from Jamestown, Virginia. They were kidnapped by the Portuguese." how about: «In the early 1600s, Portuguese mercenaries abducted African villagers at random to exploit them for their personal profit. Some of these African abductees became the first slaves in the English colonies, when Dutch capitalists ransomed the captives from the Portuguese racketeers and in 1619 transported them to Point Comfort (now Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia). At Point Comfort, English colonists purchased the Africans from the Dutch traders like livestock at auction.»
 * "released servants had to be replaced"?? not sure if the person who wrote this was trying to be ironic but nobody 'needs' servants. are they really saying 'English colonists were completely incapable of mobilizing themselves to work the land, and so the only way they could survive was by enslaving others to save them from their own uselessness?' no, I don't think so. how about: «White colonists thought their lives were more important than those of Africans, and so they greatly desired to replace servants immediately upon their release, lest the colonists themselves might have to undertake the sort labor that they forced African abductees to perform without compensation.»
 * "This practice was gradually replaced by the system of race-based slavery used in the Caribbean." - oh ok the system just came and replaced the practice of indentured servitude, like, race-based slavery just reached its big ol' hand up from the Carribean and shooed indentured servitude away and said 'hey it's me now!'??? no. specific groups of people made decisions which changed the normative processes away from temporary servitude toward perpetual chattel slavery. and they did this not because they were forced to but because they were greedy, or they thought they were superior, or whatever other reason.
 * The next paragraph is begins with erasure of the horrors of slavery. "Africans first arrived ... Africans were transported ... these people came from that stretch of the West African coast ..." oh, that sounds nice. And then we have erasure mixed with apologism for Americans, of course the white savior Americans who couldn't do any wrong! "Only about 5% (about 500,000) went to the American colonies. The vast majority went to the West Indies and Brazil ..." oh that sounds nice they went to the West Indies and Brazil and besides if there was anything wrong with it only 5% of it was caused by the Americans, I mean only 500,000 people that's not much is it?? "...where they died quickly." OH IS THAT WHAT HAPPENED. should i be pleased that the article acknowledges that people DIED because of the slave trade? or is this more apologism, 'they died quick, painless deaths'? and what about those who didn't die, and their descendants, who endured generations of grueling forced labor and dehumanization at the hands of English, Spanish, Dutch, French and Portuguese settlers?? and what's this? "Demographic conditions were highly favorable in the American colonies, with less disease, more food, some medical care, and lighter work loads than prevailed in the sugar fields." OH THAT'S NICE AMERICAN SLAVES WERE SO FORTUNATE!! GOD BLESS AMERICA. (i am not claiming that the quoted statement is factually untrue - it's not an area of my expertise - but it is hugely misleading and frankly whitewashing for that to be the only comment made.)
 * The last paragraph of this subsection is just more of the same erasure and apologism. "At first the Africans in the South were outnumbered by white indentured servants, who came voluntarily from Britain." OK this is completely factually accurate but why are you highlighting this? 'Yes there were Black slaves but not that many, there were more volunteers than slaves!' Also how long did that situation last, why, and why did it change? "They avoided the plantations." the white volunteers avoided the plantations ... and ...? I thought this was an article on African American history, not on the history of white people in the context of an African invasion. "With the vast amount of good land and the shortage of laborers, plantation owners turned to lifetime slaves who worked for their keep but were not paid wages ..." Nice erasure of the armed and deadly theft of land from Native Americans, also fostered by white supremacy. Or did the genocide of Native Americans just 'happen' and therefore there was just all this land lying around just like that? 'There was so much land oh my goodness it just fell from the sky into the white saviors' hands and demanded that they cultivate it, such was their obligation, and so the good plantation owners were simply obliged to find lifetime slaves, slaves they would care for over their lifetime or maybe slaves who had been slaves all their lives or in any case slaves who heavens to betsy it was just natural for them to be slaves, that was their lives and they worked in exchange for room and board in lieu of wages so wasn't it nice for them and their lifetimes!' And... what's this? "... and could not easily escape." Oh really? it sounded so nice for them, why would they want to escape??? 'Well unfortunately dear me they were not the most talented bless their hearts so they didn't know how to leave, of course, but it was probably for the best since they earned their keep where they were on the plantations and the outside world would have been dangerous for them, since they were just so ignorant, and the plantations were just natural for slaves.' It just gets better. "Slaves had some legal rights (it was a crime to kill a slave, and a few whites were hanged for it.)" Are we supposed to be delighted that a handful of whites were punished for murdering our ancestors? When many thousands have done so with impunity and continue to do so today??? "Generally the slaves developed their own family system, religion and customs in the slave quarters with little interference from owners, who were only interested in work outputs." That is extremely misleading, and probably more or less false, to say there was "little interference from owners" or that the owners "were only interested in work outputs" and - wait a minute - did you just normalize the "owners" bit? Without me even noticing? Of course because Black people are less than human so it's normal we would have owners? How about «captors»? The section ends with a flourish: "Before the 1660s, the North American mainland colonies were expanding, but still fairly small in size and did not have a great demand for labour, so the colonists did not import large numbers of African slaves at this point." The erasure would be laughable were it not so simultaneously dispiriting and infuriating. How about: «Before the 1660s, European colonists in what they called the North American mainland (in honor of colonial European imperialist attaché Amerigo Vespucci) were still in the early stages of swindling, conquering and genocidally depopulating the lands of Native Americans, on the continent some native peoples referred to as Turtle Island. Therefore, the lands under Europeans' control were small relative to population of white indentured servants. Thus, given an ample supply of white indentured servants, commercial interests did not go to the trouble of developing industrial-scale abduction and enslavement of Africans until the 1660s, when colonists stole more land and volunteer servants became more scarce.»

That's all, I can't go through any more. I'm tired. I hope you get my point. My critiques are not limited to slavery, I could make the same criticisms throughout all sections of the article. There needs to be more discussion of the experience of Black people in what is now the United States, a lot more criticality of who did what and why and how, and zero tolerance for apologism, erasure, white-saviorism, and white-centering of Black people's history! If those who have written this article are too tired to change it then just delete it, honestly, I think as-is it does more harm than good on here.

--Caffelatteo (talk) 16:38, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Possible contribution?
I was recently told about Pearl City (Boca Raton) which has a rich African-American history and is currently undergoing gentrification. The article needs work but may be connected to information on this page. Those of you with knowledge on the subject could add to this and the Pearl City article. --Chemkatz (talk) 22:09, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

The first sentence seems to have poor grammar.
The first sentence speaks of "the arrival Africans to North America". Surely this should be "the arrival of Africans in North America" [insert "of", and exchange "to" for "in"]. The "edit" function for this article seems to be unavailable - possibly for good reason. 14.201.57.126 (talk) 03:36, 11 October 2023 (UTC)