Saturday, July 25, 2009

Blog Name Change, Voting and a Question

Hey everyone!
So I'm changing my blog name to.............. *drumroll*
Reading in Color
It changes tomorrow. So edit your blogrolls please! Url will be the same.
I hope you like the name, I really do! But if you don't, I hope you continue to visit my blog anyway :D

Also that little Black Blog web awards image I have next to this post, in the right corner? Click on it and vote for me! Thanks!! I am annoyed with the awards though, because they don't have a Book Blog category. There may not be a lot of book blogs for AAs in YA, but there are a pretty good amount of blogs that review books with AAs for adults. So they need a category!

Now for my question: do people prefer Black or African American? I use the two interchangeably, but I know some people find black offensive, or vice versa. Thoughts?

9 comments:

  1. I grew up in the 70s. That's when we were loudly professing,"I'm black and I'm proud." It's the term I grew up with and it feels good to me.

    My grandmother's generation. That's a different story. To call someone black often was used as an insult. My grandmother prefered colored or Negro but never black.

    When opted to change our name to AA, I went with the flow, but how do I identify? Black, baby. Black and I'm proud.

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  2. Same here--my grandmother could have passed for white, and she always referred to herself as "Negro" or "colored"...I prefer black because it's more expansive, and can include different nationalities and ethnicities; black people are part of a diaspora, we're global, yet the perspectives we most often see/read/hear are US-centric...so I use black most of the time, but in different contexts I need to specify that I'm mixed race, Caribbean, Canadian, etc. Black is a political category, too, and that's where my allegiance lies...Miss A, do you identify as an Afro-Latina?

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  3. Yeah I agree wtih both you guys. I usually use black more often. Black is beautiful and covers so many different people.
    Zetta quite honestly, when people ask me about my culture I say Black. Then after a pause I remeber that I'm also Latina. I haven't grown up speaking Spanish and so I usually identify myself as Black. But ya if I had to write down my ethnicity I would say Afro-Latina

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  4. Haha That's such a cool coincidence. I haven't read Jason & Kyra but I was planning on it. Maybe I won't now though. I'll link to your review once you post it.

    ~Tashi

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  5. Many of my students were from countries other than Africa (Jamaica was a common one) so in class we would say "Black" to cover everyone - unless someone preferred African American. The problem was that then it led to "White" for all white people and as most of my Caucasian students were from vastly different places, that didn't help much (Is Sweden really like Montana for example?).

    When I review a book I go with what the author uses in the text whenever possible but the problem is that if someone reads it and sees me write "Black" when they prefer African American then they get offended.

    It's all very complicated especially when you are half French Canadian and half Irish American and can barely figure yourself out!

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  6. I often feel the same way. I like 'Black', but I almost feel like I'm insulting white people when I say white! But Caucasian sounds weird to me. It is so very complicated. Canadian and Irish? That's so cool!

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  7. I have a quick question/observation thingy - I've seen a lot of blogs referring to poc and I'm wondering how long that's been a widespread term for encompassing black, hispanic, asian etc? Is it an American thing (I know if you said that in Britain it would be an 80/20 chance you'd get a ticking off, or a response like 'I am not blue') or do other nationalities also use the phrase? If you add that into the mix of what you'd prefer to be called what would come out on top?

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  8. Interesting observation. I have no idea if poc is used by people of different nationalties, I just know that the (book) blogging world in America at least, uses the term poc to encompass all nationalties.

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  9. Among writers and activists, people of color is commonly used and in the broadest sense refers to non-white groups. That's been my experience.

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