‘African-American’ Finds Place in U.S. Culture : Race: Many black Americans have come to the conclusion that the term is more descriptive of their ancestry.

It was last June, when she began working at the Museum of African-American History in Detroit, that Lenda Jackson’s definition of herself unconsciously began to change. Instead of black, she started saying African-American.

“I consider myself a black woman, but African-American just sounds better to me,” said Jackson, who is the museum’s public relations director. “African-American is just more descriptive of what we are. No one is really black, like the color black.”

Many black Americans have come to the same conclusion in recent years, especially since Jesse Jackson proposed the change. African-American appears to be gaining currency as the term of choice for many blacks, and is beginning to seep into the culture at large.

In addition to Jackson, others who have used it are New York Mayor David N. Dinkins, Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.), tennis star and author Arthur Ashe and novelist Ishmael Reed. Television interviewer Oprah Winfrey once described herself as “a colored girl who became a Negro, then black, then African-American.”

President Bush, in eulogizing choreographer Alvin Ailey last December, called him “a man committed to weaving his African-American heritage into our nation’s cultural tapestry.”

Some radio stations and black newspapers, including the New York Amsterdam News and The Atlanta Voice, have adopted the term, as well as campus organizations and scholarly publications.

“It’s fashionable now to be known as African-American,” Lenda Jackson said, “just as in the ‘70s it was fashionable to be called Afro-American or black--which was preferable to Negro, just as Negro was preferable to colored.”

That, in one sentence, more or less sums up a century of linguistic history--one rife with politics, bigotry and deep emotion. Just as one can date a tree by counting the rings of a core sample, one can roughly tell when a black organization was begun by its title: the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People (1909), the United Negro College Fund (1944), the Congressional Black Caucus (1971).

Add to that list the name African American Summit (1989). It was at this conclave in New Orleans last April that Jesse Jackson made the speech in which he called for the switch to African-American.

It was Ramona H. Edelin, president of the National Urban Coalition, who first suggested in 1988 that black Americans needed a greater sense of their history and one way to start would be to call themselves African-Americans.

The term was already gaining popularity in academic circles, and Edelin’s idea was enthusiastically adopted.

“To be called African-American has cultural integrity,” Jackson explained at the New Orleans meeting. “It puts us in our proper historical context. Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical culture base. African-Americans have hit that level of cultural maturity.”

Surveys conducted since then have found that the term has been accepted by at least a sizable minority of blacks.

In polls conducted last spring by Time magazine and the Chicago Tribune newspaper, 26% of the black respondents preferred “African-American.” In the Time poll, 61% said they preferred “black;” in the Tribune poll, 40% preferred “black” and 31% said either term was fine.

In May, the San Diego school district surveyed black pupils, parents and civic leaders to determine which term they preferred. “African-American” was chosen by 41% of the students, 49% of their parents and 70% of community leaders.

As a result of the survey, San Diego schools now use “African-American” instead of “black” in lessons and official paper work.

“I, frankly, am astonished at how quickly it’s been received,” Edelin said. “Some people never liked ‘black’ because--you may have noticed--African-Americans come in every shade in the universe. ‘Black’ was always confusing for some children. . . . This obviates all that confusion and also, hopefully, will get us past some internecine wars over shades of color.”

In contrast to the change from Negro to black two decades ago, little rancor accompanies the emergence of African-American. It is not associated with a radical political movement, as black was, and has never been used as an insult. A variation, Afro-American, has long been a respectable term.

At NAACP headquarters in Baltimore, James Williams said that many officials use African-American and black interchangeably. The organization’s official position is that usage is up to the individual.

African-American, said John Baugh, a professor of linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, “is a term that will gain broad acceptance, especially in literate circles, and it will be a term that conveys respect. But it will not become offensive to call an African-American black.”

If African-American is to become the standard term, nearly everyone agrees, the next step must be its acceptance in the mainstream. That may be starting.

The Merriam-Webster Co. will consider placing the word in the next edition of Webster’s dictionary, editorial director Frederick Mish said. New words must be used frequently in different settings for years before they make it into the dictionary, and African-American is “well on its way to meeting the kinds of tests we require for new entries,” Mish said.

The U.S. Census Bureau put “black or Negro” on 1990 census forms. It used “ Negro” in 1960, “Negro or black” in 1970 and “black or Negro” in 1980. Census spokesman Miguel Rivera said that “African-American” will be used in the 2000 census if there is sufficient demand.

Most general interest newspapers’ rules of style require writers to use black unless they are quoting someone. That, too, could change.

The Los Angeles Times’ Laura Morgan said that some black journalists have expressed a preference for African-American and the newspaper is considering changing its style for news articles.

At The Boston Globe, “the term black is preferable, but there is no proscription against the use of African-American,” spokesman Richard Gulla said.

The Associated Press Stylebook, adopted by many newspapers, calls for the use of black, but “if usage dictates, eventually we’ll change,” Stylebook Editor Norm Goldstein said.

Not everyone likes the new term. Some people have suggested that it doesn’t apply to all Americans of color: blacks who came from the West Indies, for instance, or those whose ancestors did not come from Africa--dark-skinned people from Australia or Asia, for instance.

Philip T. Gay, an associate professor of sociology at San Diego State University, wrote the Los Angeles Times last April to make the case for black.

“The culturally significant links to Africa were broken during the years of slavery,” he wrote. “A name change might obscure that fact, but it won’t change it.”