Nsaa -- Adinkra Symbol meaning "he who does not know the real design will turn to an imitation". Credit: W. Bruce Willis, Adinkra Dictionary	African American, Or American African? By Grisso* I was watching Tavis Smiley's show on Black Entertainment Television (BET) the other night. He and three guests were discussing the recent murder in Detroit of a Black man by Arab employees at an Arab owned gas station. One of the guests, Hussein Ibishi, was listed as being a Director of the American Arab (sic) Anti-Discrimination Committee. Not the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, but the American Arab ... Committee. Interesting, I thought. It underscored the difference in the way Arabs view themselves vs the way we as African Americans...no... American Africans... view ourselves. What's the difference, and why is it important? Part of the reason why I came to prefer, and now commend for widespread use, the term "American African" stems from a trip I was privileged to take to China when I was a young World Bank executive. There I met a Chinese gentleman who became my host for much of the trip. In a conversation I had with him, I remember referring to "Chinese-Americans", only to be stopped by him. Correcting me, he said, "They are not Chinese-American, they are American Chinese." He said that Chinese remain Chinese even when they leave China; they merely become different varieties of overseas Chinese, for example, Singapore Chinese, Malaysian Chinese, etc. I had to agree, because in Trinidad and Tobago, where I come from, it was true that the Chinese there were called either, simply, "Chinese", or "Trinidad Chinese", but never "Chinese-Trinidadian." Mulling it over, it occurred to me that it was a matter of identity and precedence. As to identity, the Chinese see themselves as being Chinese first, whatever the country to which they may have migrated. Presumably, this remains the case for as long as their bloodlines remind them that that is what they are. As to precedence, it is a matter both of blood, and of culture. In the long history of mankind, the nation-state formations wrought by European imperialist expansion and conquest within the last 500 years or so are still relatively recent creations. By contrast, such peoples as the Chinese, also the Arabs, also the Jews, have a very long tradition that is not lightly cast aside. They may carry one or other "national" passport, but there is in addition that other passport, one that emerges from the birthright conferred by bloodline. And based purely on the weight of bloodline and of time, it is the latter "passport" that carries precedence. At least for those people who know who they are. For such people, they would be American Chinese, rather than Chinese-American, or American Arab, rather than Arab-American, Russian Jew, rather than Jewish-Russian. There are times and places though, where such naming is offensive to the host country, and the order of precedence is reversed. To call oneself an American Arab is to give precedence to the Arab part of one's identity, reducing the American part to mere qualifier. Although America is a relative upstart in historical terms, being a mere 200-plus years old, it is very jealous of its position as the world's leading power, and punishes, one way or another, those of its inhabitants deemed to be "un-American". In such a climate, many will hasten to yield precedence to the American part of themselves, especially those belonging to insecure minority groups. Thus those who, from China's perspective, are American Chinese, will hasten, in certain contexts at least, to refer to themselves as Chinese-American. And American Jews may sometimes defer to American sensibility and call themselves Jewish-American. While to be a hyphenated American is a step down for most other groups, it was a step up for Black-folk. We started out as Africans, and have remained Africans by sight throughout our sojourn in America. But when we descended into the hell-hole of enslavement, we lost in the process not only our names, and our individual identities, but also our collective identity as Africans. In a word, we became niggers. All other terms were kinder, gentler versions of the same dispensation: darkies, coloreds, negros, Blacks. In the most recent dispensation, the term used is "African-American". But that this is used as a marker for race, not nationality, was brought home during the O. J. Simpson trial when some hair sample was described as "African American". (Would a hair sample ever be described as "Chinese American"?) So the term "African-American" does not work that well, improvement though it may be over all the other things we have been called. By sight, what we are is African. And in a country with many immigrants, someone who is by sight African need not be American. The same goes for Chinese, for example, and Arabs. But more important than appearance is self-identification. Like it or not, self-identification is something more than what country issued your passport; it is also the bloodline inherited from one's ancestors. Rest assured that even where due deference is paid to American nationalist sentiments, and the Jews call themselves Jewish-American instead of American Jews, and the Chinese call themselves Chinese-American instead of American Chinese, that their knowledge of who they are, reinforced by ethnic schooling and ethnic solidarity, betrays no confusion of identity. The gentleman from the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee also evinced a clarity of ethnic mind and purpose that the American African would do well to emulate. If the Chinese in America understand that they are American Chinese, the Jews that they are American Jews, and the Arabs that they are American Arabs, then, we as an African people may claim no less: we are American African. Our bloodlines conspire to remind us, and our ancestors will not let us forget, that we are the most ancient people of all. When we embrace that reality will be when we cease to become economic prey to every other newly arrived ethnic group in America, the Arabs in Detroit most recently. Grisso *(Grisso is a 48 year old African of the diaspora. He has an engineering PhD, and is the author of a mathematical treatise on decision analysis under uncertainty. His email address is grisso@TheAfrican.Com).