African American
Americannoun
adjective
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of or relating to African Americans.
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African-American, occurring between the United States and Africa.
Several international charities are promoting African-American cooperation in expanding access to safe drinking water.
noun
adjective
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
Etymology
Origin of African American
An Americanism dating back to 1780–90
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Intersectionality is on display at the California African American Museum with “Free and Queer,” a show that puts Black LGBTQ+ Californians at the center of the civil rights movement.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 3, 2026
In 2020, he became the first African American to take part on a long-duration mission to the ISS.
From Barron's • Mar. 25, 2026
The analysis included health data from 1,998 African American adults living in both urban and rural areas of Jackson, Mississippi, who participated in the Jackson Heart Study.
From Science Daily • Mar. 19, 2026
Noë Bryant spent 41 years identifying as African American.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 24, 2026
I prayed for the souls and families of physicist Dr. Ronald McNair, the second African American astronaut to go to space, and Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher to become an astronaut.
From "Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.