Native Americans and Afro-Caribbeans

[snotneck]

Who is responsible for re- naming peoples such as Native Americans and Afro-Caribbeans?
How are they appointed?
How do they decide on the new name?
What input do the recipients have?
What is the basis of the new name in law, for instance, is it legal to call a member of the West Indies cricket team a West Indian? Or not?
How are the decisions imparted to the rest of us?
Are there any other peoples lined up for re-naming, could the English become Anglo-Europeans, the French Franco-Europeans etc.?

[sddsddean]

Not really an answer snotneck, but I remember seeing Nelson Mandela interviewed by a black american female tv reporter not long after he became president of South Africa. Her question was ' How does it feel to be the first Afro American president of South Africa?'. His reply was ' I have always been an African; I have never been an American'. I think half the time it is just media types who use these PC terms. When I used to live in London, I had a black friend who came from Hackney. Does that make him an Afro Cockney?!

[jno]

that was just a dumb question to Mandela; of course he's not American. Afro-Americans are Americans of African descent. Native Americans were renamed because they weren't Indians - a mistake by Columbus. The pressure for renaming comes from the people themselves, who get tired of being misnamed. Some people are starting to call themselves English rather than British; same thing.

[dot.hawkes]

I am a Yorkshire lass and that does for me

[jake-the-peg]

Wikipedia attributes the term African-Americans to a group of Activists in 1961.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American

There is also some comment that the term Native American is criticized in some quarters as one imposed by outsiders rather than taken on themselves (in contrast to the African American term)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_ in_the_United_States

[saxy_jag]

I know my cousin's wife is 1/4 Indian, and that's how her family describe themselves. Also, when you shop in the area where they live, certain goods are labelled either 'Indian made' or 'non-Indian made'. Don't know how widespread that is.

[luna-tic]

The once native people that lived in the place now called America did not really have a country-based title like "American". Many of them called themselves "Dene" or "The People". Only as individual tribes were they named which later was given to the areas they usually resided such as Kansas,Wyandott, Delaware, Michigan and so on.
Judging by the way many of these people were treated long ago,I don't think they had any input to the decision on their name.
Also, many of the now well known titles for the individual tribes were, slang or mis-pronounciations of their real tribal titles often made by french speaking trappers or natives from other tribes who couldn't really interpret the name properly to the settlers, army or government officials.