Term Study

Plain-Language . Movement . Equality . Trust

American African

by | Feb 13, 2024

American African


American African — Common Law Dictionary

Primary Definition

The expression under study is an uncommon and historically variable ethnonym formed by placing “American” before “African.” Depending on context, it may refer to:

  1. a person of African ancestry whose nationality, upbringing, or principal civic identity is American;
  2. a person or community of American origin established in Africa, especially in historical discussions of Liberia;
  3. an older, reverse-order alternative to the now-familiar designation “African American”; or
  4. an interpretive identity emphasizing that a person is American by nation and African by ancestry.

It is not presently a standardized racial or ethnic category in United States federal data collection, ordinary legal drafting, or mainstream dictionary usage. Contemporary federal terminology uses “Black or African American,” while permitting people to report more detailed identities such as African American, Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, Ethiopian, or Somali. Federal classifications are administrative and statistical categories based on self-identification; the Census Bureau expressly describes race as a social classification rather than a biological or genetic definition. ([census.gov](https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html?utm_source=openai))

Documented fact: Reverse-order names appeared among the many labels debated during the nineteenth century by people of African descent in the United States. They never became as dominant as “Colored,” “Negro,” “Black,” “Afro-American,” or, later, “African American.” ([bpb.de](https://www.bpb.de/shop/zeitschriften/apuz/archiv/527317/zur-geschichte-der-amerikanischen-buergerrechtsbewegung/?utm_source=openai))

Interpretive analysis: Word order can imply emphasis. In “African American,” the noun or principal national identity is ordinarily American, modified by African ancestry. Reversing the order can make “African” appear to be the principal identity, modified by an American cultural, historical, or national connection. Actual meaning nevertheless depends on the speaker, period, and community; English compounds do not establish citizenship or ancestry by themselves.

Etymology and Origin

“American” derives from “America,” the geographical name introduced into European cartography in the early sixteenth century and traditionally associated with the Latinized name of Amerigo Vespucci. “African” comes through Latin Africanus, meaning a person or thing belonging to Africa, ultimately connected with the ancient name for the land of the Afri in North Africa. The deeper origin of the name “Africa” remains uncertain. ([merriam-webster.com](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-history-america-continent-name?utm_source=openai))

The combined expression did not arise as an ancient African, biblical, Roman, or tribal name. It is an English-language compound produced by the historical encounter of African peoples and the Americas. Its development belongs principally to the history of the Atlantic slave trade, European colonization, American slavery, emancipation, migration, and the continuing effort of people of African descent to name themselves rather than accept labels imposed by others.

Black communities in early America used or encountered a succession of terms, including “African,” “free African,” “person of color,” “Colored American,” “Negro,” “Afro-American,” “Black,” and “African American.” These words were never merely neutral descriptions. Each could communicate a position regarding ancestry, citizenship, cultural solidarity, social status, or political belonging.

During the antebellum period, the word “African” could affirm ancestral dignity, but it could also be used by colonization advocates to portray free Black people as foreigners who properly belonged elsewhere. Many Black opponents of colonization therefore emphasized that America was their country by birth, labor, family, sacrifice, and lawful claim. A reverse-order compound could serve as one way—though never the only or universally preferred way—to join American nationality with African descent.

Cultural and Historical Context

The expression must be interpreted against the forced transportation of millions of Africans into the Americas and the formation of new communities under slavery. Enslaved people came from numerous nations, kingdoms, linguistic groups, and religious traditions. Slave systems frequently disrupted those particular identities, while racial law grouped diverse peoples into broad categories based on presumed African descent.

In what became the United States, African-derived practices interacted with European, Indigenous American, and Caribbean influences. Family customs, worship, music, oral tradition, foodways, craftsmanship, language, and methods of resistance developed into distinct Black American cultures. The Library of Congress notes that communities formed under slavery retained recognizable signs of African traditional culture while producing new American forms, including Gullah Geechee language and culture. ([loc.gov](https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/african/africans-in-america/?utm_source=openai))

Citizenship and the Colonization Debate

The American Colonization Society, organized in 1816–1817, promoted the removal or migration of free Black people from the United States to West Africa. Its motives were mixed and remain controversial. Some supporters presented colonization as humanitarian, missionary, or antislavery work; others plainly sought to remove free Black communities whose presence challenged slavery and racial hierarchy. Black abolitionists frequently condemned the project as forced expatriation from their native country.

The society established a settlement in West Africa in 1822. That settlement became Liberia, which declared independence in 1847. The migrants and their descendants developed an English-speaking community strongly influenced by American political institutions, Protestant denominations, architecture, dress, and social customs. The more established historical name for this population is “Americo-Liberian.” Thus, in a Liberian context, a reverse-order American–African designation may point toward people culturally shaped by the United States who became part of an African state. It should not, however, be used to erase the identities and histories of Liberia’s Indigenous peoples. ([history.state.gov](https://history.state.gov/countries/liberia?utm_source=openai))

Changes in Preferred Naming

Preferred terminology changed repeatedly. “Colored” was widespread in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “Negro” became a formal term in scholarship, government records, and civil-rights organizations, although it later became dated and offensive in ordinary contemporary use. “Black” gained renewed political power during the Black freedom movements of the 1960s and 1970s. “African American” was widely promoted during the late 1980s as a cultural and ancestral designation comparable to other hyphenated or compound American identities, although examples of that wording are much older.

No change was absolute. Different generations and communities continued to use different names, and “Black” and “African American” remain common today. Increased immigration from Africa and the Caribbean after 1965 has made the boundaries of the latter term more complex. A Nigerian American, Somali American, Jamaican American, Black Puerto Rican, and multigenerational descendant of United States slavery may all be classified within a broad federal racial category while maintaining different ethnic histories. ([smithsonianmag.com](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-changing-definition-of-african-american-4905887/?utm_source=openai))

Biblical / Torah Context

The expression itself does not occur in the Torah or Bible, and Scripture cannot supply a direct definition for a modern American ethnonym. Attempts to claim that the name was divinely revealed, assigned to a biblical tribe, or created by a particular ancient people lack textual support.

The Torah does, however, provide principles often applied to questions of ancestry and human dignity. Genesis 1:27 describes humankind as created in the divine image. That teaching concerns humanity as a whole and does not make dignity dependent upon color, nation, social rank, or continent. Biblical references to Cush, Egypt, Libya, and other African regions show that Africa and African peoples were part of the geographical world known to biblical writers, but ancient names such as “Cushite” cannot automatically be equated with a modern American racial category. ([sefaria.org](https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.1.27?utm_source=openai))

Numbers 12 records criticism directed at Moses in connection with a Cushite woman. Interpreters dispute whether the woman was Zipporah, another wife, or whether “Cushite” had a descriptive or figurative sense. Consequently, the passage should not be treated as a simple modern statement about race. It does, however, warn against using perceived foreignness or ancestry as a pretext for contempt.

In the New Testament, Acts 8 presents an Ethiopian or Cushite royal official as an early recipient of the gospel, and Acts 17:26 describes the nations of humanity as sharing a common origin. Galatians 3:28 teaches spiritual unity in the Messiah without declaring that cultural, familial, or national histories cease to exist. These passages have supported antiracist and human-unity teachings, but they do not dictate one mandatory modern ethnic name. ([biblegateway.com](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+17%3A26%2CGalatians+3%3A28&version=NIV&utm_source=openai))

Legal Implications

Historical Common Law and Slave Law

The expression has no independent technical meaning in English common law. More importantly, American slavery cannot accurately be attributed to “the common law” alone. It was constructed and enforced through colonial enactments, state statutes, judicial decisions, constitutional compromises, property rules, and federal legislation. Rules such as hereditary slave status and racial restrictions were often statutory departures designed to preserve slavery and racial hierarchy.

Courts historically used terms such as “African,” “Negro,” “mulatto,” “colored person,” and “person of African descent” when determining freedom, enslavement, citizenship, marriage, voting rights, testimony, education, and access to public institutions. Those classifications varied by jurisdiction and period. They were legal instruments of status, not scientifically reliable descriptions of human biology.

Citizenship

In Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, the United States Supreme Court held that persons descended from enslaved Africans were not citizens within the meaning it attributed to the federal Constitution. The decision is now repudiated and legally displaced. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery except as punishment for crime, and the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, established national birthright citizenship for persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. A person’s African ancestry does not diminish American citizenship. ([archives.gov](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford?utm_source=openai))

Citizenship, race, color, ancestry, and national origin are legally distinct concepts even when they overlap in a person’s experience. Citizenship normally concerns membership in a political state. Race and color are protected classifications in civil-rights law. National origin concerns a person’s or ancestors’ geographical origin and associated ethnic, cultural, or linguistic characteristics.

Modern Civil-Rights Law

The exact ethnonym a person selects generally does not create or remove civil rights. Courts and agencies examine the actual facts: whether discrimination occurred because of race, color, ancestry, ethnicity, national origin, or another protected characteristic. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits covered employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Title VI prohibits race, color, and national-origin discrimination in federally assisted programs. Similar protections appear in voting, housing, education, contracting, and constitutional law. ([eeoc.gov](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/section-15-race-and-color-discrimination?utm_source=openai))

Federal statistical terminology should not be mistaken for a private-law status comparable to citizenship, domicile, tribal membership, or nationality. Checking a census category does not prove a specific genealogy, establish membership in a cultural organization, or determine eligibility for every ancestry-based program. Conversely, an unusual or historically informed self-description does not permit employers, governments, landlords, or institutions to evade antidiscrimination laws.

Military and Governmental Context

People of African descent served in American military forces from the Revolutionary era onward, often while denied the rights associated with the nation they defended. The Civil War brought the organized enlistment of United States Colored Troops. Later Black units served on the western frontier, in the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and subsequent conflicts, commonly under segregated conditions.

President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, declaring equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin. Military integration was gradual, but the order marked a decisive federal rejection of official segregation. This history reinforces a central point in the naming debate: African ancestry and full American civic or military belonging are not mutually exclusive. ([archives.gov](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9981?utm_source=openai))

Spiritual Meaning

Spiritually, the expression may signify a reconciliation of inheritance and belonging. “American” can represent birthplace, citizenship, covenantal responsibility to neighbors, and participation in the life of a nation. “African” can represent ancestral memory, cultural survival, historical loss, and connection to a vast and internally diverse continent.

For descendants of enslaved people whose particular ancestral nations were obscured by trafficking and record destruction, an African designation may restore a history that slavery attempted to erase. Placing American identity first may likewise declare that centuries of labor, sacrifice, military service, family formation, worship, and civic participation establish an undeniable claim to the country.

This is interpretive rather than a universal religious doctrine. No person should be compelled to adopt a spiritualized racial label. Healthy use respects truth, personal conscience, documented ancestry where available, and the right of communities to name themselves.

Modern Usage

In current English, the expression is rare and may confuse readers. Some may interpret it as a historical synonym for “African American.” Others may understand it to mean an American expatriate, migrant, missionary, settler, or descendant living in Africa. Still others may use it deliberately to place American nationality before continental ancestry.

For clear contemporary communication, use the identity preferred by the person or community concerned. Depending on context, appropriate terms may include Black, Black American, African American, Nigerian American, Ethiopian American, Ghanaian American, Haitian American, Jamaican American, Afro-Latino, multiracial, Americo-Liberian, or a more specific national, ethnic, or cultural name.

The term should not automatically be applied to every Black person in the United States. Not every Black American identifies ethnically with the history of United States slavery, and not every African immigrant prefers a continental designation over a national identity. Likewise, “African” should not be treated as though Africa were one nation, language, culture, or people.

Controversies / Criticisms

  • Ambiguous word order: Readers may disagree about whether nationality, residence, culture, or ancestry is being emphasized.
  • Historical foreignness: African terminology has sometimes been used to deny that Black people born in the United States are fully American.
  • Overbreadth: A continental label can obscure Nigerian, Akan, Igbo, Yoruba, Somali, Ethiopian, Liberian, Caribbean, Creole, Gullah Geechee, and other particular identities.
  • Different family histories: Descendants of United States slavery, recent African immigrants, Afro-Caribbean immigrants, and multiracial Americans may share racialized experiences without sharing the same ethnicity.
  • Administrative misuse: Statistical categories are sometimes incorrectly treated as biological facts or conclusive proof of genealogy.
  • Self-identification: No single label is accepted by every person of African descent. Context and individual preference remain essential.

A further disputed claim is that reversing the familiar compound somehow changes a person’s legal nationality or frees that person from statutory jurisdiction. It does not. Word choice may express history, philosophy, or political conviction, but private terminology cannot by itself alter citizenship, domicile, taxation, criminal jurisdiction, contractual obligations, or constitutional rights.

Conclusion

The expression is best understood as a rare, context-dependent identity term joining American nationality or cultural formation with African ancestry. Historically, it belonged to a larger contest over whether people of African descent would be treated as foreigners, colonists, racial subjects, or full members of the American political community. In a Liberian setting, similar reverse-order language may also evoke communities formed by migration from the United States to West Africa.

It is not a recognized technical category of common law and has no power, standing alone, to determine citizenship or legal rights. Its greatest significance is cultural and interpretive: it can emphasize an American civic identity while preserving African ancestral memory. Responsible use requires attention to historical period, geography, self-identification, and the distinction between documented ancestry, administrative racial classification, and personal spiritual meaning.

Sources / Further Reading

The term "American African" is not widely used, but it seems to be a reverse of the term "African American". "African American" is a term that typically refers to individuals in the United States who have ancestors from Africa. The term acknowledges their African heritage and their American nationality. If "American African" is used, it might refer to an American who has moved to Africa, but it's not a commonly used term. Please note that cultural and ethnic identities can be complex and individual, and it's always best to respect how each person chooses to identify themselves.