African American

Sometimes Af·ra·mer·i·can

[af-ri-kuhn uh-mer-i-kuhn]

noun

1. an American with Black African ancestry.

adjective

1. of or relating to African Americans.

2. African-American, occurring between the United States and Africa.

   Several international charities are promoting African-American cooperation in expanding access to safe drinking water.

African-American

noun

1. an American of African descent

adjective

1. of or relating to Americans of African descent

Usage

During the 1980s, many Americans sought to display pride in their immigrant origins. Linguistically, this brought about a brief period of short-form hyphenated designations, like Italo-Americans and Greco-Americans. The Black community also embraced the existing term Afro-American, a label that emphasized geographical or ethnic heritage over skin color. The related label, African American, also saw an increase in use among activists in the 1970s and 1980s. African American was even more widely adopted in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s after high-profile Black leaders advocated for it, arguing, as Jesse Jackson did, that the term brought “proper historical context” and had “cultural integrity.” See Black ¹.

This is the currently preferred term in the US for people of African ancestry

Word History and Origins

Origin of African American¹

An Americanism dating back to 1780–90

Example Sentences

Those artifacts that have been recovered have, since their excavation, been on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

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On her resume, she also lists a job working as the executive assistant to the chief of public affairs at the National Museum of African American History and Culture from 2018 to 2019.

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Carter: It’s a walk through how music, culture, dance is all rooted and connected together from African roots, from the African diaspora meeting the African American diaspora.

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The conflict was so brutal, broad and complex that it strongly motivated Indigenous people and those who would come to be known as African Americans to fight on both sides.

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“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” arguably the finest work in August Wilson’s 10-play series chronicling the African American experience in the 20th century, is set in a boarding house in Pittsburgh in 1911.

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