Words play a critical role in articulating our reality within an Indo-European linguistic framework. We must, as long as we speak non-African languages, find ways to control word usage when it speaks to our condition through a process of assimilating and normalizing words that serve in our interest. There can be no undermining how both philosophies of language influences thought and vice-versa. Thus language is a key aspect of culture and culture is key in determining ones language. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (aka Linguistic relativity) suggested that language limited the extent to which members of a "linguistic community" can think about certain subjects.
Black People is a construction which articulates a recent social-political reality of people of color (pigmented people). Black is not a racial family, an ethnic group or a super-ethnic group. Political Bblackness is thus not an identity but moreover a social-political consequence of a world which after colonialism and slavery existed in those color terms. The word “Black” has no historical or cultural association, it was a name born when Africans were broken down in to transferable labor units and transported as chattel to the Americas. The re-labeling of the Mandika, Fulani, Igbo, Asante, into one bland color label- black, was part of the greater process of absolute removal of African identity; a color epithet that Europe believed to be the lowest color on Earth, thus reflecting the social designation of African people in European psyche. There is no country called Blackia or Blackistan and a people must respectful be tied to geography as skin color is not the primary definitive identifier. Hence, the ancestry-nationality model is more respectful and accurate: African-American, African-British, African-Arabian, African-Brazilian, and African-Caribbean.
How does one arrive at the term “black Africans,” are there green Africans? Would you speak of “yellow Chinese,” or “brown Indians”? Globally the term " Red Indian" is rejected as deeply pejorative yet "black African" is still used even in South Africa to define the majority. If 95% of Africans are “Black” (capital B, if it must be used) then the minority should bear the adjective--not the majority. It is disrespectful to describe Africans with a label based solely on a color, especially when it does not accurately reflect the physical appearance of most Africans. This is made even more offensive when the etymological root of that label (black) is derived from the word Negro, and is used in place of the word African as a racial or cultural identity. In reality we must ask ourselves what is the difference between "Negro" and "Black" save historical association, the words mean the same thing, so we have moved from being Black in Spanish (negro) to Black in English (black). It is strange that despite all the genetic research and advance human anthropology we are still clinging to primitive 18th century post-Darwin model of race, which sole aim was/is to segregate and de-culturalize and enslave.
Sub-Africa is another divisive vestige of colonial domination which balkanized Africa assigning negativity below the "waist belt" of Africa. The notion of some invisible border, which divides the North of African from the South, is rooted in racism, which in part assumes that sand is an obstacle for African language and culture. This band of sand hence confines Africans to the bottom of a European imposed location, which exists neither linguistically (Afro-Asiatic languages),ethnically (Tuareg ), politically (African Union, Arab league), Economically (CEN-SAD) or physically (Sudan and Chad).The over emphasis on sand as a defining feature in African history is grossly misleading as cultures, trade, and languages do not stop when they meet geographic deserts. <More>