We Are All African Americans!

Meet your fellow African Americans

The prevailing notion among anthropologists is that all human beings originated from Africa. This idea is known as the Out of Africa Theory. By implication, that means we Americans - all of us - are African Americans. You, with red hair and freckles: you are an African American. That reality has to drive the right-wing bigots bat-shit crazy, Ben Carson included. Of course, I'm using a literal, technical interpretation of being "African American." I will concede that the identity is more widely understood as being of a certain ethnic derivation, being of a darker dermis, and having certain recognizable cultural characteristics.

However, I do think the superficiality and the generally illegitimacy of race as a concept is brought into sharp relief when you put it in that perspective. Most Black folks embrace "African American" as their identity. However, some do not. A year or so ago, I listened to a Black woman make an impassioned argument that she was not "African" American. I have nothing to do with Africa, she said; my family does not come from Africa, I do not have any relatives in Africa, I do not know anybody in Africa, and there is nothing African about me. What makes me African American? I'm just an American and I happen to be Black.

Well, that puts her in a rather common place with us pale-butts who do not identify as African either, although that is our ultimate point of origin as anatomically modern human beings. Of course, I have light skin and an aquiline nose, so I don't get thrown in jail for having my shoes untied. Not even for showing plumber's crack.

No wonder Huckabee and his ilk must deny evolution. The only thing between him and his Kenyan forefather is about 200,000 years.