African. Negroid. Negro. Black. African American. Over time the name has changed, and I can't even rightly say if all of the ones above are accurate. One thing I can say, however, is that in my life time the generally accepted term went from Black person to African-American. Black was originally a derogatory word used against Blacks, but in a television interview a prominant Black activist in the nineteeen-seventies shouted Black Power, and it became an empowerment word from then after until the hyphenated name came into being.

I have heard contemporary Black activits promoting the protection of Black culture. Some of these people are afraid of the dilution of the African race, as well as the disappearance of African culture. Firstly, I'd like to address the fear of the lose of a race. Race is a social construct. We say African-American, but there are atleast four different ethnic groups in Africa. In America we are familiar with the "Negroid", but there's also the Arab, the Pigmy, the "Bushman" and those of European descent who have lived there for a few hundred years. To say African-American, is therefore ambigous if taken literally and not how it is used culturally.

On top of that argument, I will also stipulate that the disappearnce of the African race is not as pressing an issue as the African-Americans make it sound. The African continent is still full of Africans, and while the AIDS epidemic has wiped out my generation from many areas, if not completely, drugs are making it possible to live with the disease and educational programs on alternative means of sex is being attempted. The fact of the matter is, the future of the African race does not depend on the African-Americans, for their are pervasive throughout the African continent. (makes sense, don't it?)

Beyond that, however, one has to question what an ethnicity is. We classify people based on phenotype, visibile physical traits such as hair color, skin tone, and eye shape. The truth is though, these are not hard and fast classifications. If you look at border regions globally, you see a cross section of genetic traits. Even within one particular region where there is one ethnicity, like China, you see diffences between the regional north and south that can be attributed to climate. With technology, however, the various genetic boosts and defeciancies can be overcome, and distance is no longer an issue for inter-marriage.

Aside from that though, you also have the issue of genetic recombination. The Germans in the 1940's were concerned about eugenics, as was Americans in the early 20th century and it went back even as when populations of freed slaves from Africa in the sixteen hundreds became more prominent. The truth is both the Americans and Germans were under the false notion of purity of blood, that the races must be kept seperate. The truth is, by intermingling of races you get greater genetic diversity, with the more favorable traits being passed on more frequently. When you think of genetic diseases, it is usually associated with a particular race. Sickle-cell anemia, T-Sacs, huntington's disease are just a few examples of genetic disorders typically associated to a particular ethnic group. This is not because the group is inherently flawed, but rather because the group has overlapped its gene pool too much in the past. Before the great migration to the cities because of the industrial revolution, most communities were isolated from one another and thus had a limited stock of DNA. Over time the inter-marrying of the same gene-pool developed problems. I could go into it more, but basically my point is if you breed with someone of the same exact ethnic type, there's a greater chance of you having a more recent ancestor than if you mate with someone of a different race (we're all related depending on how far back you go, but if the other person has undergone a different mitochondrial evolution, taking place every 20,000 years, then its very unlikely you have a common ancestor). I realize that some of this jargon might be too much for the average reader, so I'll just simplify my argument by saying if the Germans were right about the greatness of the pure blood, explain Tiger Woods.

Having fully covered the African people argument, I would like to cover the disappearnce of African culture in America. Where was it two hundred years ago? One hundred years ago? Twenty years ago? You look at it at anypoint in time, and you will see something different. Culture is constantly changing, it is not a static thing to be kept under a glass frame. You can take snap-shots of it to get an idea, but from one day to the next it is slowly changing as the world changes around it. Economics, politics, and global affairs affect it as much as the climate. You can't preserve African-American culture anymore than I can preserve White-American culture. I wish I could turn the clock back to the nineteen-eighties. The music, the fashion, the attitude; I find them all preferential to the current American fads, but it was a fad itself. It came and went, and the current trends will leave and be replaced before I realize it. That is the temporal nature of human existance, nothing is permanent and things will change for better or worse, and the next generation will view it as the way of the world before it changes on them. No one can turn back the clock, nor can they hold its hands in place. That is what must be accepted, otherwise you will waste alot of time and energy as you watch the world pass you by.

This also applies to the Jews, Latinos, and Indians