Celtaddict, "African American" has been the formal referent for Black Americans since the mid to the late 1970s.

In referring to Black people, it's also appropriate to use the informal referent "Black". For instance, there's the James Brown song "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm proud". Note that James Brown didn't write "Say It Loud, I'm African American and I'm proud".

I believe that I spoke part of the truth when I said that we {Black people} change our slang and colloquial expressions when they become used too often by Whites. But in my opinion, that is only one of the reasons why African American slang changes so often. I think one other reason is that we just like to play with words. And we love to create new things, often based on older things. However, the reasons for the change in group referents are much deeper than that. As I wrote in my 27 May 08 - 09:49 post to this thread, I believe that the word "Negro" was rejected by Black people because it was too closely associated with slavery, and too closely associated with the struggles for equality that occurred in the late 19th century, the early twentieth century, and late middle of the twentieth century.

I think that the 1960s and 1970s were times of change. I believe that we {Black Americans} were heavily influenced by the multicultural movement of those times which paid homage to the cultures of different ethnic American populations. One thing that these populations have in common is that they are connected to a geographical place-China for the Chinese, France for the French, Ireland for the Irish, Poland for the Polish etc.

African Americans are a mixed race people. Most African Americans have some White ancestry & some Native American ancestry. And some African Americans {also} have some Asian ancestry. However, the tie that binds us together as a racial group is that we have some degree of African ancestry. I believe that the fact that so many African nations were declaring their independance from European nations during the 1960s contributed to a large degree to the pride we Black Americans felt about being Black. When we grew dissastified with the group referent "Negro", we tried out several other referents and then we [that is to say, a number of Black leaders] decided that African American would be our formal referent. The referent "African American" began to be used in the print and visual medias replacing "Negro", "Colored people", and "Afro-American" as, "Afra-American" and eventually African American became our formal referent of choice. At the same time, "Black" continued to be used as an informal referent for African American people, and other people of the African Diaspora. Notice how I go back and forth in using that formal referent and that informal referents. As the "hip-hoppers" say "It's all good".

It should also be noted that in choosing "African American" as our formal referent, we looked forward by going back to the past to reclaim a group referent that we had used before. For example, the Black religious denominations AME and AMEZ-African Methodist Episcopal, and African Methodist Episcopal Zion had never taken the word "African" from their church names.

While America may be in a change decade now {as reflected in the slogans of the probable Democratic party nominee for USA President, Senator Barack Obama}, the referent "African American" has been very stable for almost 40 years. I don't see that formal referent for Black Americans changing any time soon.