Re: Librarians, was RE: [SG] HAMR

At 09:28 20/03/2002 -0500, you wrote:

> >>>From: "John Crimmins" <johncrim@voicenet.com>
> >>>
> >>>> (Today's Gem:
> >>>> PARENT: My child has to do a report on a famous African-American,

> and her
> >>>> teacher assigned...here it is: Marie Curie.
> >>>
> >>>Oh My Sainted Aunt.

Oh, I believe it. I watched an apparently sober American academic
explain 
how Cleopatra was 'African American' (and I thought she was the
Macedonian 
Queen of Egypt). Poor old Trevor McDonald was introduced on American TV
as 
African-American (he is actually Oxbridge Black English whose parents
came 
from the Caribbean), much to his astonishment. The term African American

clearly means something in the states where you have an American people
who 
came from Africa many years ago but the meaningless term African-English

has started to appear in our newspapers. We have second plus generation 
Black English subjects, African-derived subjects (usually Nigerian) and 
black Caribbean subjects (often Jamaican) and culturally they are unlike

each other.