As a black American, I'm glad they didn't use the term African-American. It's insulting. While I love the African people, many (if not most) blacks in America have no African ties (at least not for the past few centuries). It's just PC nonsense and a gross misnomer.

Then how about they use Black-American? The article is not about blacks in general, it's about black people within the U.S.

Then all would have been well. ;-)

How is it insulting? It just references past ties. Would someone with an Irish heritage be insulted by being called Irish American? I don't care if someone calls me Black or African American or even Black American. If you have a preference, then that's fine. I just found it weird to be insulted by it.

Yes, it references past ties. But how far back should we go? Most blacks in America are here by way of slavery, which happened over 200 years ago. As metamemetics said, if we go back far enough, hell, everyone is African.

Another reason is that the Black-American (due slavery) people have become genetically distinct from their west African ancestors. Many of us have a significant percentage of non-African genetics, through inter-marriage and other happenings. If we want to reference past ties, then why ignore that?

Black-Americans (due slavery) have been here since there was an America, so no need to create the distinction of an African American. The term is meaningless.

The problem with "African American" is that, in America, it is less general than "black." Black can encompass Afro-Caribbeans as well, for example.

"American blacks" or "American-born blacks" might be phrases of high utility, since they seem to balance both of our concerns with over- or under-generalization.

I doubt that Afro-Caribbeans are being addressed in the article though. The article seems to be speaking about the U.S only.

There are many black people in the US who consider themselves culturally Caribbean and not African.

I doubt that African-Americans are culturally "african".

The term "African-American" clearly implies "African": it's one of only two words in the phrase!

You just demonstrated that you are using it to refer to the concept of "black". This is a very poor choice as not everyone from Africa is black, and not everyone black is from or has parents from Africa. And if you are using the logic "well he obviously has SOME ancestor originally from Africa", technically EVERYONE does.

Black-Americans do not have any cultural link to Africa, so I was pointing out that saying Carribean-American is not the same thing as saying African-American. Carribean-American implies a direct cultural link to the carribean islands, much like Arab-American would imply some type of cultural link to Arab culture. African-American is special in that it does not imply any link to Africa at all.

African-American is a known term used to refer to people of a particular population group within the United States, and as such, it is much more accurate for the purposes of the article than the very broad term "Black".

Black is not the same as African-American. Black is a broad group, and African-American is a subgroup of black that lives within the United States. You can also refer to this group as Black-American or so on, but it remains that this particular article was not speaking of the broader "black" group, it was speaking of the more specific American-Born Blacks, which are also commonly refered to as African-Americans, irrespective of any cultural ties to Africa.

'American' is understood from the context of national incarceration rates which are by definition nation specific. So you're choosing between 'black' or 'african' and black is the more appropriate term and what the incarceration statistics refer to.

>"African-American is special in that it does not imply any link to Africa at all."

It does and\or should. Continuing to propagate unclear vocabulary does a disservice to language.

The phrase I would have liked to see there is Black-American.

Language by definition is unclear. For example, "Caucasian" originally means people from the Caucasus region, but it has been adapted to refer to the american racial construct of "white". If you look at the biological definition of Caucasian, it's very different from the general used U.S meaning, in that it includes indians and somalians etc.

So you can't attack "african-american" as a word but find all the other vague and misappropriated words like "caucasian" okay. And if it actually happens that all basterdized words are removed from language, we would be left with only grunts.

I think the article is clear in stating this is about the US. Thus blacks, whites, educated, uneducated.. are all understood to be in the US.

Well, it's on a website. Imagine opening the website and reading the start of the article:

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Title: Sex and the single black woman

Subtitle: How the mass incarceration of black men hurts black women

IMAGINE that the world consists of 20 men and 20 women, all of them heterosexual and in search of a mate. Since the numbers are even, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man? You might not think this would make much difference. You would be wrong, argues Tim Harford, a British economist, in a book called "The Logic of Life". With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging. Somehow or other, she "steals" a man from one of her fellow women. That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else. A chain reaction ensues. Before long, every woman has to try harder, and every man can relax a little.

---

If this were a local newspaper, then it would be fine. But for something on the internet, it's not at all clear what is meant. A magazine which writes for the internet has to be more specific when it speaks about regional problems, so that it's clear that this does not affect other people.

The opening paragraphs speaks about the world and about the british, so it could very well be a world-wide phenomena.

Journalism is now global, and appropriate care has to be taken, in my opinion.

What probably goes missing is that the article is written for the hardcopy magazine and the article is in the US section of the magazine.

Yeah, this is a general feature of how The Economist writes. Sometimes, as an American, it's a bit jarring to open to a random page and start reading an article that launches right into a discussion of some current event in the UK without even pointing out, "hey this is a thing happening in the UK". But when it's in the UK section, they just write assuming you already have that context, and often that you are even up to date on ongoing issues (e.g. they don't explain who David Cameron is in every single article that mentions him).