Azizi-

I've been reading your posts with deep interest for several years now, never feeling that I had anything to contribute but learning much from the discussion. Maybe this time I have something to say.

I went to college with Charley Noble and we're still friends. My mother always assured me that on the 1950 census I am listed as Negro or Black or whatever the currently acceptable term (to the Census Bureau) was at the time. That was because my stepfather was Black/Negro/Afro-American/African American. My aunt (my stepfather's sister) had six children ranging in skin color from "light, bright, almost white" to very definitely Black. I'm clearly white/White/ even Jewish by complexion and genetics, but I've been told by family members that I'm the patriarch of an African American family of which I am the only white member. I say this not to brag but to try to make clear where I come from.

When I was a youngster in the late '40s and through the '50s I remember clearly the struggle in the (may I just use Black to save typing?) community to get media and government agencies to capitalize Negro.   No sooner had that battle been almost won when Negro became a Tom word and Black was the word in my community. When Black became acceptable later there was a decade or so of casting about before African American became the preferred term.

Through all of this the central issue I believe has always been respect, and who gets to make the definitions. The discussion of labels from the colored/Negro/Black/Afro-American/African American community has always been about whether we (I include myself in the group because I choose to) may define ourselves or whether we must be defined by those who oppress (or "don't have a prejudiced bone in their bodies"). When a label we choose gets co-opted, we naturally look for another term that is OURS, not theirs,

I have a hard time using African American, not because of any political concern but because of habit. I'm still caught up to some degree in the struggle of my childhood to get the damn newspapers to capitalize Negro as a sign of respect. I've gotten accustomed to "Black" after 40 years. I still remember reading the Baltimore Afro-American (along with the Defender and the Pittsburg Courier) when I was a kid.

In this country the "one drop" theory has always ruled. Maybe my childrens' generation or my grandchildrens' generation will succeed in making this discussion irrelevant except as a historical curiosity. I can hope. Whatever the laws might have said about what legally makes someone Black, one drop usually controls. I can't remember the '50s movie about that; " Imitation Of Life"?

But the isuue is respect. Do we get to define ourselves or do we acquiesce in their definition of us? The genetic definiions of proportion of African DNA are of historical interest-what do those old words mean? But now as always it's about who has the power and how it is used.