African American: An American of black African descent. The term may also be written with a hyphen as African-American.
The term entered into usage largely starting in 1988, when the Rev. Jesse Jackson held a news conference to urge Americans to use it to refer to blacks. African American has largely supplanted black in health matters. For example, "Breast cancer tumors in African-American women are more aggressive than tumors in white women."
The term has been a subject of debate, in part because it is ambiguous. It might be limited to Africans who have immigrated to America or to people born to one African and one American parent. Some have argued that the term African American should refer only to the descendents of slaves brought from Africa to America.
From a scientific viewpoint, the term African-American makes absolutely no sense. Most genetic evidence now supports an African origin for all humans on earth. Thus, everyone living in the Americas today is, properly speaking, African American.
Library > Literature & Language > Dictionary also Af·ri·can-A·mer·i·can ( ăf ' rÄ-kÉ™n-É™-mÄ•r ' Ä-kÉ™n ) n. A Black American of African ancestry. See Usage ...
A site exploring the major themes, events and people in African-American history from the colonial era to modern times.
African-Americans, or Black Americans, are citizens of the United States whose ancestors, were mostly indigenous to Sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that a significant ...
Annotated list of links to web sites covering African American history.
African Americans, also known as Afro-Americans or black Americans, are an ethnic group in the United States of America whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were ...