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I wonder, what would be the best tag for the history of Black American society? I didn't find any suitable in the present collection. Would it be black-americans, african-americans or anybody have better proposition?

Or do we need one at all? I considered adding it to my recent question - Was there anything like Black American architecture style or symbolic in the beginning of 20th century?

There is quite analogic tag for native-americans, used 16 times.

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    I believe the politically correct tag would be "african-americans". Mar 23, 2013 at 13:53
  • Thanks, I'll use it then. Mar 23, 2013 at 14:39
  • By mistake I've put african-american instead of african-americans, which doesn't follow the existing schema of tags (jews, vikings, native-americans). But I'm unable to change it. Can anybody improve it? Mar 24, 2013 at 7:45
  • I'll fix it. Thanks.
    – ihtkwot
    Mar 24, 2013 at 18:59
  • It's me who should thank. :) Mar 24, 2013 at 19:14

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This is actally a tough one (and IMHO and important one). It is really hard to overstate the influence African-American culture has had on the overall (mainstream) culture of the USA. Not to mention I've got a question I'm thinking of asking that could really use this tag.

The problem with using african-americans is that implies to me a people, rather than a culture. The tag would be much more useful if it could include the culture (eg: Jazz music, Blues music) which some people of other ethnic backgrounds often participated in, rather than just African-American people.

For that reason, I'm actually in this case happier with african-american (an adjective, not a noun).

Formerly a lot of african-american cultural items were referred to as "negro", and many things from that era kept the name (eg: Negro league baseball, Negro Spirituals). However, that word is decidedly discouraged today for new terms, so using negro as a tag would be a Bad Idea.

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  • I didn't think about it. I can't change the tag back by myself, I believe my status is too low to edit it or it's only up to moderators. Mar 26, 2013 at 9:58
  • Do we have analogical, adjective tags? Because e.g. if we ask about Jewish culture, we use the jews tag, not jewish. Mar 26, 2013 at 10:00
  • @DarekWędrychowski - Looking over the questions tagged with jews, they all seem to be clearly about the people to me. I'm thinking hard for something equivalent to American life and the Jewish community as Jazz or The Blues is to the African-American community...
    – T.E.D. Mod
    Mar 26, 2013 at 13:21
  • @T.E.D. - vaudeville/comedy would be my off the cuff guess.
    – DVK
    Mar 26, 2013 at 13:47
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    Well, I don't have anything against african-american tag or any other form of it, I leave that to mods as I can't change it by myself once again. As for Jews and American life, I agree, but with Europe it's pretty different, as they had a thousand of years more to accomplish such influence and I guess that the percentage of Jews in European society before WWII was more adequate to African-Americans in USA (which is 12%). Jewish community in USA is just too small for that. Or maybe my guess is wrong, as I base it on Eastern European conditions, where Jewish community was the biggest. Mar 26, 2013 at 13:52
  • No, I think you could well be right about that. I don't know how much (or what) of Jewish culture Europe ever adopted in quite that way, but I could see where the conditions were ripe for it.
    – T.E.D. Mod
    Mar 26, 2013 at 14:14
  • @DVK - I was thinking the exact same thing! Even had it in my answer for a little while. However, I perused the wiki page for vaudville, and the letters "j" "e" and "w" don't appear in order anywhere in there. Many of the performers named do happen to be Jewish, but many aren't. So perhaps it is a "jewish culture" thing, but if it is I sure wish Wikipedia had said so.
    – T.E.D. Mod
    Mar 26, 2013 at 17:57

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