Something I’d Like to Remember

This objection of mine to the designation African-American is not popular. Nevertheless! The phrase is ISLANDING. The phrase is limiting. The phrase is weak…Almost a honeyed music: AF-ri-can A-MER-ican. (As opposed to B-L-A-C-K! Which comes right out to meet you, eye to eye.)


~~Gwendolyn Brooks, Report from Part Two, qtd in Black Writing from Chicago: In the World, Not of It? edited by Richard Guzman