LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake,
spring 2003
Student Research Project
Rosalyn
Mack
LITR 5731 2003
research project
Power and Identity: Naming
an American People of Color
Just
as we were called colored, but were not that, and then Negro, but not that, to
be called black is just as baseless.” – Jesse Jackson, December 19,1998.
Identity
is supposedly finite, if you know a person’s name, you know who he is.
But what happens if a name can be changed at will?
How then do you identify the person?
The values placed on names are so significant that most people become
uncomfortable being called by any other name; the name becomes their identity.
The American descendants of African slaves have learned that there are
times when changing names is an exertion of power, an overt demand for an
identity unburdened by derogatory, racist, or degrading connotations.
But does the ability to change a group name, to shift identity, convey
power or simply highlight the lack of power?
No other group in American history has suffered renaming as often, or
definitively, as the Africanized people brought or bred here.
Dating
from the 1600s to the present, African Americans have struggled to find a name
that encompassed all aspects of their identity.
According to Debra Walker King, there have been several names used to
refer to Africans brought to the United States as slaves: “African
(1619-1850s), Negar (1619), blackamoor (1800), Negro
(1800-1950s), colored (1800-1950s), black (1800-1900;
1960s–present), Afro-American (1880–1980), African-American
(1900; 1970–present), Afra-American (1920–present), and Africana
(1980–present)” (King 47). The
end dates included in King’s data designate the point at which official
records ceased to use the name but, in truth, many of these are still used
today, most often in a derogatory reference.
Each of these names are attempts to define the identity of a people
“from within the a structure of meaning…that is itself shaped by the
systematic exclusion of that people” (King 47).
The
most commonly used names for Africans and their descendants were African, Negro,
colored, black and now African American. During
the 17th century, “blackamoor,” “Negro,” and “Ethiopian”
were used interchangeably to denote any individual of darker skin color, with
little regard for nationality. It
was commonly used in Europe to describe persons of African or Moorish descent,
and this may be how it entered the American lexicon, conceivably brought to
America along with the slaves by Spanish and Portuguese sailors, as was the term
“Negar”. However, in current
times, referring to a person of African descent as blackamoor or Negro is
considered condescending and racist. Only
in church and organization names is the use of Negro, African and Ethiopian
still found acceptable, for example the African Methodist Episcopal Church and
the United Negro College Fund.
Changing
the group name has always been an exercise in power, identity and politics. “Each of the previous shifts form colored to Negro to black
emerged from within the group and won gradual and often grudging acceptance in
the larger society” (Martin 92). Blacks
have understood since the moment they stepped off the slave ships that name and
identity were vital to power. As a
group, Blacks referred to themselves as African until around the 1850’s.
This was largely due to the fact that new slaves were still being brought
into the country and they strove to keep their connection to Africa alive.
However in the 1830’s the name African was dropped following a push by
the American Colonization Society to send free blacks back to Africa (King 47).
The temptation is to assume that the movement was a benign attempt to
return those claiming to be African back to their homeland, but the truth was
most likely that free blacks raised the hopes of slaves, enticing them to
believe that they too could be free. In
any case, when the attempt was made to return them to Africa, the black
leadership urged the use of the term Negro, or colored in some parts of the
southern United States, as a way of removing the threat posed by the term
African. Being identified as
African was no longer safe and thus no longer favorable.
Negro
and colored were the accepted identifiers, used by both blacks and whites. The names began to fall out of favor once they became
synonymous with discrimination, lynchings, and second-class treatment for black
Americans. Both were seen as holdovers from slavery and yet Black leaders such
as W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey favored the term colored, perhaps because
it encompassed all non-white peoples in the United States.
Colored was used as a catchall that included “Indians, Orientals and
Mexicans who were classified …by the U.S. Census in 1940” (Kaplan 71).
But
in 1966, Stokely Carmichael and other black elites, under the banner of “Black
Power,” sought to change not just how blacks were thought of but also how
blacks thought of themselves, and began railing against the terms Negro and
colored. Black youths and militants demanded to be called black to
show that they were “emancipating themselves” from the oppressive white
system; anyone still referring to themselves as Negro or colored were mocked or
ridiculed and considered to be “still in Whitey’s bag…Black became
associated with youth, unity, militancy and pride, while Negro increasingly
connoted middle age, complacency, and the status quo” (Martin 87).
The Nation of Islam, whose primary spokesman was Malcolm X, often
referred to the “so-called Negro” in a derogatory manner.
In
the 1920s and 1930s, Richard Wright and others had used the term “Black
Power” to call for more assertiveness and less assimilation among blacks.
The biggest difference between the two incarnations of the name was that
this time a political agenda had been clearly defined and put into action
(Martin 84).
The
Black Power movement was the most overtly and aggressively political naming in
the history or blacks in America. The
rationale behind this new use of the name was “racial assertiveness and
rejection of assimilative integration…[through the use of] pressure group
tactics in the accepted tradition of the American political process as well as a
positive attempt to instill a sense of identity and pride in black people”
(Martin 84). The goal of the
militants was the creation of an autonomous black community that did not rely on
whites to give them what they needed. Black
Power demanded race consciousness and considered those who chose to pursue
racial assimilation as traitors to the cause.
The black middle-class most often bore the brunt of militant criticism,
“to be integrated it was necessary to deny one’s heritage, one’s own
culture, to be ashamed of one’s Black skin, thick lips and kinky hair”
(Martin 87) and anyone could be criticized for not being “black enough,”
i.e., being to light-skinned, having white friends or holding too many of white
culture values.
One
of the major criticisms of the Black Power movement was the isolation of the
black middle class. If they wanted
to be accepted and included in the new black dynamic, the “middle-class
Negroes were required to adopt cultural values of lower-class urban blacks as
marks of racial loyalty” (Martin 87). Ideologically
Black power belonged to the ghetto dwellers and “the brothers in the
street;” college students were encouraged to move away from elitism and closer
to the black community. The Black
Power movement sought to remove class differences and create a unified black
consciousness, without the hindrance and racial domineering of whites.
The
NAACP and Martin Luther King condemned the ideals of Black Power as separatist
and anti-white, a stringent form of reverse racism.
To be black was considered as a challenge to the old way of life; it
implied “an upheaval of the political and social terrain” (Kaplan 71).
King sought to combat this new naming by restating his call for shared
power with whites, which helped to reduce the tensions that the growing movement
was creating. Some groups refused
to relinquish their use of the old names. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) kept its name and the loyalty of older, more assimilation minded
people; the United Negro College Fund also kept its name.
Both groups lost the faith and backing of the younger, more militant
blacks and have never fully recovered that support.
Nonetheless, whites and most institutions made the transition from Negro
to black with relative ease.
Black
began to replace the word Negro in publications like Ebony and “the stylebooks
of The New York Times, the Associated Press, the Hartford Courant
and other news organizations” (Kaplan 65) around 1967.
But, even in 1968, most of the Negro public still resisted the change:
69% favored Negro while less than 6% chose black and 15% thought Afro-American
was the best choice; not until 1974 did a majority of blacks finally accept the
new name (Martin 88). Black is
still used by most major newspapers and magazines; Afro-American is favored
within the arts, literature and academic milieus.
At
a press conference in December 1998, Jesse Jackson, leading a group of
influential black leaders, announced that the descendants of African slaves
should be called African-Americans. Jackson
held that “to be called African-American has cultural integrity.
It puts us in our proper historical context.” Jackson’s announcement heralded the move away from black
towards a name he hoped would more strongly link America’s ethnic subgroup to
the African continent and a more positive sense of their place in history and
America.
The
campaign for African American was an attempt to increase race consciousness and
“renew group solidarity by recreating a sense of shared disadvantage that can
mute class and other differences among blacks” (Martin 87).
Where the Black Power movement isolated middle-class blacks and forced
them to examine their connection to the black community, this new term, African
American, was meant to unify all blacks together through a shared cultural
identity. More emphasis is placed
on African than on American, urging blacks to assume “newly contrastive roles
and representations that have a separating function within society” (Martin
87).
The
effectiveness of this new name lies in its ability to invoke Africa and the
captured slaves’ loss of homeland and culture.
“The call for recognition of an African American ethnicity restated the
black claim to primacy among groups deserving redress from American society
because of the special experience of slavery” (Martin 85).
But to retain their claim on the American morality, African Americans can
never move beyond slavery; they must forever link their identity with the
degradation and inhumanity of slavery. Phillip
Gay, choosing to decline the new label, asserts:
The
descendants of Africans brought to the United States have long since created a
unique culture virtually unrelated to Africa…[containing] a distinctly Black
American cuisine of low-cost edibles more indigenous to Europe and the New World
than to Africa, a distinctly Black American patois firmly rooted in the English
Language, relatively distinct Black American patterns of familial organization
and…religious practices grounded in Christianity, a non-African religion
(Martin 86).
Gay
further argues that most black Americans are at least six or seven generations
removed from Africa and have no real connection to the continent.
African is a continent, not a nation, so to be African carries no true
significance; being from a particular nation would have been the identity that
the captured people understood and cherished (Martin 86).
For black Americans, the term African American carries a lot of
preconceived notions about their enslaved ancestors and Africa.
Africa could be seen as “a pristine paradise which could be as glorious
as the imagination could make it. One
could become a Pan-Africanist and find respite in contemplating one’s supposed
descent from splendid African royalty rather than from despised American
slaves” (Martin 87). Being African
American gave a dignity and tragic grace to the enslaved ancestors; here was a
perfect chance to lift your ancestry above the common and find more than just
slave status.
Jackson
and his proponents argue that the name seeks “to unify race and
class-consciousness with multiethnic and revolutionary internationalism”
(Martin 87), thereby including all members of the African Diaspora, regardless
of their current ethnicities and geographic locations.
But regardless of how all-encompassing it may be, African American still
portrays blacks as victims and therefore helpless and needy, entitled to
restitution and government assistance.
The
African American movement is guilty of still portraying blacks as “uniformly
disadvantaged in socioeconomic status, contributing to stereotyping as poor,
uneducated, unemployed, and dependent, despite a large majority living above the
poverty line” (Martin 88). This
was, and still is, the best tactic for acquiring government funds and creating a
national sense of shame and entitlement. The
current black elite has spent the past 20 years encouraging all blacks to
consider themselves victims of institutionalized racism, although with less
confrontation than the Black Power leaders used.
The
current black elite, Jesse Jackson and the other influential black leaders,
believe they can improve the lives of all black Americans through the guilt
associated with the past enslavement of their ancestors, but “the way a
minority group chooses to be known sends a politically magnified message” to
the larger dominant society, and the use of African American, with its stark
reminders of America’s shameful history, might work against blacks by
rendering them permanent victims.
The
same complicated ideas of name, identity and power that make selecting the right
group name so difficult are at work when black Americans choose personal names.
PERSONAL
NAMES
The
process of naming and renaming, or unnaming as some scholars refer to the
changing of names, is most often a display of power.
Slave traders often stripped slaves of their names once they were onboard
the ships. One slaver stated in
1860, “I suppose they…all had names in their own dialect but the effort
required to pronounce them was too much for us, so we picked out our favorites
and dubbed them ‘main-stay,’ cat-head,’ ‘Bull’s eye,’
‘Rope-yarn,’ and various other sea phrases” (King 49).
Most of the African captives, viewed as mere merchandise, remained
nameless during the Middle Passage. They
only received names once they were delivered to their owners, at which point
they were usually given English or Spanish names; very few retained their
African names.
By
renaming the newly captured Africans, the dehumanization process was begun. Slave owners understood that if they wanted “to render a
person or a people powerless and subservient you imposed a name of your own
choosing’ (Kaplan 74). They knew
that without a proper name a person easily becomes a “thing” and the
degradation process is easier. The
first step in breaking the slave’s spirit was to strip him of his personal
name.
Displays
of this power are common in literature, Robinson Crusoe established his power
over the savage he saved by changing his name: “I made him know his name
should be Friday…I likewise taught him to say Master and then let him
know that was to be my name” (Kaplan 75).
The juxtaposition between power and names lies bared in that quote; Defoe
establishes the enslavement of another human being by the simple expedient of
name changes: Friday is stripped of his native name, whatever it may have been
and Crusoe gains another, more dominant, name without losing the power of his
native name. Crusoe doesn’t
concern himself with the savage’s name or his past, it’s irrelevant, and
changing his name is the surest sign of that irrelevancy.
In
The Life of Olaudah Equiano, Equiano goes through several name
changes. Equiano’s name changes
were chosen to strip him of any connection to his past or African home. A significant naming event takes place after the captain of
the Industrious Bee purchases Equiano. The
name Gustavus Vassa is bestowed upon Equiano, the name itself is exotic and
foreign sounding, which may be an indication of the ship captain’s inner
feelings regarding the young slave boy. It
was common for slaves to be given classical names during this time period but,
oddly, Gustavus Vassa was Swedish king (Hook 285).
There is irony and cruelty in naming a slave after a king, though many
slaveholders rarely, if ever, gave any thought to the demeaning quality of the
names they chose.
Plantation
owners would frequently give their slaves and barnyard animals the same names,
drawing an unavoidable connection between his two forms of chattel.
The human chattel was no more or less value than the animal.
Ned the mule and Ned the slave were “comparable in convenience,
resiliency, and foot-pound output” (Kaplan 77).
Enslaved
blacks had no power over their names, neither the group name nor the personal
name they were called by their slave owners; but many developed “secret”
names or nicknames as a way of distinguishing themselves and achieving a measure
of personal autonomy. “Blacks
have had available to them only a limited number of gestures with which to
emphasize both their independence and their particularity” (Kaplan 81).
Nicknames were the best method of empowering that independence.
Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison, gives an idea of how these
nicknames were acquired: “Names they got from yearnings, gestures, flaws,
events, mistakes, weaknesses. Names
that bore witness” (330). These
weren’t common names like Tom, Dick or Ned, which were the kinds of names
given out by the slave owners. These
names carried weight for their owners, replacing “the empty, objectified
designations of the master’s word” (King 53).
But the true expression of newly acquired power came when the slaves were
liberated and chose surnames for themselves.
Within
the slave narratives, newly freed or escaped slaves often exulted in the power
of selecting a new name for themselves. Since
most slaves went their entire lives without a surname, their first demonstration
of their new status was to adopt a surname.
Historically “the practice of taking Ol’ Massa’s name as one’s
own did exist, but perhaps not to the extent that is generally believed…many
newly freed slaves preferred almost any name to that of the former owner”
(Hook 295).
Frederick
Douglass went through three surnames during the course of his life; the first
two were chose for expedience as he escaped from slavery.
The third and final name, Douglass, was “an act of self-determination
and announced his mission as a leader in the antislavery movement and its most
effective orator” (Kaplan 86). Douglas
was not alone in his desire to have a surname.
In 1863, at the end of slavery, approximately four million blacks adopted
surnames; nearly every ex-slave wanted a second name as a symbol of their new
status (Hook 294-295). Booker T.
Washington in Up from Slavery, recalled that “a feeling got among the
colored people that it was far from proper for them to bear the surnames of
their former owners, and a great many of them took other surnames.
This was the first signs of freedom” (Kaplan 80).
The former slaves understood that having a surname brought a measure of
equality and put them in charge of themselves.
They chose their names rather than having them foisted upon them.
Washington
seemed to find the ex-slaves’ decision to take a new surname improper or
disrespectful, as if they should have been happy to retain the name of their
former owners. But Washington
himself chose his last name, seemingly at random; he started school and realized
that the other children had “at least two names and some of them indulged in
what seemed to me the extravagance of having three” (Kaplan 80).
So when his turn came, the boy, known simply as Booker, gave himself the
last name of Washington. This
random naming, executed by a child, is the essence of the slave’s dilemma:
knowing that others are permitted the luxury of two names and that is part of
what makes them superior. The idea
that they could share in some of that superiority would have been tantalizing to
the ex-slaves.
A
new name allowed them to create a new identity and that held a great deal of
power for them. They could be
whomever they chose to be, Washington or Lincoln, Benjamin instead of Ben or
William as opposed to Will. No
longer did they have to share their identities with barnyard animals or petty
and cruel tyrants. With a new
surname, the ex-slaves could begin to think of themselves as more than just
former chattel, they were people now. And
people could pass the chosen name on to their progeny, thereby creating
legitimacy for their line. A
surname also allowed them to keep track of their families and kin.
The
1960s and 1970s brought a new twist to the naming practices of black Americans,
the move towards reclaiming the power of one’s name.
Blacks began to give their infants unique first names, “a neologism,
often a daring and imaginative coinage (especially in contrast to conventional
white naming practices) is created for each baby that comes along” (Kaplan
84). Names such as Natayicia
(female), Shontavia (female), and DeVontay (male) are unique, conveying to the
world that the child is “one of a kind and that the parents who invented these
names were prompted by their own unconscious cues…you know that it is an
African American name right away” (Kaplan 85).
There
is some speculation that these uniquely African American names stigmatize a
child, marking them and setting them even further apart from the dominant white
majority. A recent study, conducted
in 2002 by MIT and the University of Chicago School of Business, revealed that
applicants with black-sounding names received were less likely to receive
callbacks for jobs. The study was
published in TechTalk, the student newspaper for MIT.
Over 5,000 resumes were sent out in response to 1,250 administrative and
sales help wanted ads. The results
showed that the white-sounding names received 30% more callbacks, even though
all applicants had equal credentials.
This
is an unfortunate side effect of black American’s choice to bestow Africanized
or other unique names upon themselves and their children, unfortunately “in a
society in which whites outnumber blacks five to one, an odd-sounding name can
add to a black person’s handicap…for a black, the choice between a name like
Henry Jones and one like Lango Miak can be a difficult one” (Hook 301).
The power gained by the gesture is largely undercut by the fact that the
bearer has lost her ability to blend into the dominant culture.
There is no power in the name if it can be used to undermine the group;
more power would seem to lie in being able to blend in, choosing names that are
common within the dominant culture. But
such a choice would then negate the identity of the individual – there is
nothing unique about Carol or Michael and certainly no marker that clearly
states, “I’m African American…deal with it” (Kaplan 85).
The
1970s move to “Black Power” led some blacks to show their racial pride by
dropping their “slave names” and adopting Africanized names.
The sentiment was that “to honor this name is to honor the rapes of my
mothers and the beastly lynchings of my fathers” (Hook 298). Members of the Nation of Islam took the letter X as
their surnames seeking to “remove all but one association from [their]
name…obliterating family, friends, culture, lineage, even ethnicity.
To be X is to be Muslim and nothing more” (Kaplan 87-88).
Malcolm X, formerly Malcolm Little, felt that retaining the “slave
name” was to remain in a slave mentality, continuing to lack the power of
identity. For Malcolm X and many blacks during this time, “when you
find your true name – and for many blacks this is the name of an ancestor –
you find your true identity” (Kaplan 84).
The Muslims of the Nation of Islam believe that only Allah holds one’s
true name and until then the names of former oppressors must be thrown off and
only the X is used “as a marker signifying their virtual namelessness
and complete unity in a hostile environment” (King 48).
The
struggle for power has moved beyond just gaining freedom for black Americans;
freedom has been gained but equality is still lacking.
The search for a group name that expresses the proper connection between
the African culture, past enslavement and Americanism is one that will always
challenge black Americans. Each new
name is part of a search for the one that will bring them into the majority
culture where they can find equality and justice.
The desire is to have all people understand and respect all that black
Americans have survived and achieved, their identity and power. The dream is to be able to sum it up in one descriptive
phrase: a name.
Works Cited
Dillard,
J. L. Black Names.
The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1976.
Gates,
Jr., Henry Louis. “The Life of
Olaudah Equiano.” The Classic
Slave Narratives. New York: New
American Library, 1987.
Hook,
J. N. Family Names: How Our
Surnames Came to America. New
York: McMillan, 1982.
Kaplan,
Justin and Anne Bernays. The
Language of Names. New York:
Simon, 1997.
King,
Debra Walker. Deep Talk: Reading
African-American Literary Names. Charlottesville:
UP of Virginia, 1998.
Martin,
B. L. “From Negro to Black to
African American: the Power of Names and Naming.”
Political Science Quarterly 106.1 (1991): 83-100 (page
numbering inexact due to archiving).
Morrison,
Toni. Song of Solomon.
New York: Penguin, 1977.
“What’s
in a Name? A lot for job
seekers.” Tech Talk 29 January 2003.
29 January 2003 <http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/2003/jan29/resume.html>