African-American

• African American

Patterned on forms such as Irish-American, popularized by Jesse Jackson^[1] and in common use since the late 1980s.^[2]

• IPA^(key): /ˈæ.fɹɪ.kən əˈmɛɹ.ɪ.kən/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

African-American (plural African-Americans)

1. A member of an ethnic group consisting of Americans of black African descent.

   Synonyms: Afro-American, Afromerican, (slang, archaic, US) unbleached American; see also Thesaurus:person of color

2. (US, broadly, proscribed, sometimes offensive) Any black American person; by extension, any black person.

   Synonyms: black, (dated) Negro, (dated) colored, (highly offensive) nigger, (highly offensive, dated) darky

   Hypernyms: person of color, nonwhite

• In the US, this term is often seen as a more formal and polite alternative to black.^[3]
• Aside from black and of color, most other synonyms are dated, and likely to be considered offensive in the US.
• This term is not generally used for Americans of North African descent, such as Moroccans or Egyptians, nor is it used for European Africans. It is specifically used to refer to the group of people that have descended from the Atlantic slave trade, racial segregation, and the civil rights movement that have resided in the United States for centuries as well as other Americans with African heritage, but the term is sometimes used incorrectly to refer to other groups of people, such as West Indians, more recent African immigrants, or erroneously to any black person, even if not African or American. This incorrect usage can cause offense.

African-American (comparative more African-American, superlative most African-American)

1. (of a person) Pertaining to the African-American ethnicity.

   Synonym: Afro-American, Soulaan

2. (US, broadly, proscribed, sometimes offensive, of a person) Black.
3. Of or pertaining to the culture of African-American people.

   African-American music

• See the notes about the noun, above.

• African Americans on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “African-American”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “African-American”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “African-American”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.