The Dilemma of Naming and Renaming

by Mary Green

What initially struck my interest while reading Rooks’ White Money-Black Power was the process of “naming” and “renaming,” or what she refers to as “the shift in nomenclature” regarding Black Studies (127). “By the 1990s,” she writes, “Black Studies became something now known as African American Studies” (125). It’s interesting to parallel the historical changes in the ways in which people of African descent in America have been identified [Colored, Negro, Black, Afro-American, African-American, and African American (no hyphenation)] with the subsequent renaming of Black Studies. How we name and identify others, and, more importantly, how we name and identify ourselves are ever changing to reflect the social and political atmosphere of society. Pondering on such, I recall a brilliant line in Morrison’s Beloved: “Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers—not the defined” (190). Thus, who are the “definers” (or “namers”) in this particular context? The universities? The Black Studies/AAAS department and its faculty? The students? Public opinion?

Rooks notes this “nomenclature shift” began in the 1980s. As faculty and students found African American Studies, African American and African World Studies, African Diaspora Studies, and/or Africana Studies acceptable names over Black Studies, Rooks emphasizes the political implications and strategic viewpoint(s) of each name (151). Acknowledging the [hostile] racial-political environment during the 1980s, it is neither surprising nor shocking that universities would attempt to reflect the political atmosphere in America—an atmosphere hostile with Reagan’s racially-coded political rhetoric and detrimental policies.

Furthermore, Rooks discusses how the name African American Studies “[speaks] most specifically to an institutionally acceptable political project (emphasis my own) divorced from and often openly contemptuous of Black Power ideologies” (152). However, for me, this is problematic as I am uncomfortable with this seemingly political attempt to deemphasize the significance of “B/blackness” and the role it plays in Black Studies (or, AAAS, Africana Diaspora Studies, etc.). What is so “exclusive” about a name that implies an intimate exploration of Blackness? According to Nathan Hare’s concept of an authentic Black Studies and/or AAAS, “Blackness or Black consciousness is necessary” (Anderson and Stewart 35). If one agrees with Hare’s claim, renaming as a means of distancing the department from Blackness and/or Black Power is troubling. Now, living in the so-called “Post-Obama”/”Post-Racial” era, I can only believe that AAAS will soon undergo a new name change—perhaps “Race Studies.” Interestingly, no other field of study (that I can quickly recall) has undergone such swift and rapid naming and renaming and that alone reveals the uniqueness of this field as well as the complicated nature of race in America. We are constantly defining-refining what it means to be “black” or “white” and naming-renaming ourselves to fit within or accommodate that particular definition, hence it is no surprise that Black Studies or AAAS would reflect that pattern.

Works Cited

Anderson , Talmadge, and James Stewart. Introduction to African American Studies: Transdisciplinary Approaches and Implications. Baltimore, MD: Inprint Editions, 2007.

Rooks, Noliwe M. White Money/Black Power. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.