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From: Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Maya Angelou died (28-5-2014)
Date: Thu, 30 May 2024 18:45:13 +0200
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On 2024-05-30 12:03:08 +0000, Antonio Marques said:

> Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On 2024-05-29 10:59:23 +0000, Ross Clark said:
>> 
>>> African-American writer and activist.
>> 
>> African American? She was born in the USA of American parents, lived in
>> the USA, worked in the USA, and died in the USA. She was American. She
>> may have had some ancestors from Africa, but that doesn't make her
>> African. I have very recent ancestors from Ireland (including my
>> mother), but I am not Irish.
> 
> And here I was, thinking you came from Kernow.

No. "Cornish" is not a Cornish name: what would be the point of callig 
someone Cornish if everyone around is Cornish. The name is much more 
common in Devon, just as "Devenish" is more common in Somerset than it 
is in Devon.
> Tread carefully, sir.
> 
> An unabashedly racist* relative of mine (an older generation, Archie Bunker
> type, still a great guy), whenever he wanted to indicate a black person's
> race respectfully*, said 'who has african blood'.
> 
> (*) The subtype who knows a number of blacks, talks about 'them', but also
> enjoys having meals with 'them' and would stand for 'them' where needed. I
> guess the other subtype is worse.
> 
> (**) We don't have a word for that in portuguese. While in english 'black'
> is neutral, in portuguese (preto) it can be construed as derogatory. We
> have fiddled with 'negro', sounds too stilted and hence is a problem.
> Incredible as it may seem, I've heard people refer to black people who are
> portuguese and have remote ancestors in eastern Africa as
> 'african-american'...


-- 
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly 
in England until 1987.