1. Finally! My biggest problem with the term “African-American” is that a lot of, say, Jamaican-Americans get mislabeled. Either we come up with one term that combines all “blacks” [for lack of a better word, even though it may not be the most PC] or we break it down by country of origin.

2. I totally agree. It’s just difficult to describe people as African-American because it indicates one thing (that the person is black), but says another (that the person is, well, African-American).

   This reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Apu gets his American citizenship and Lisa says “In a way, we’re all immigrants. Well, except for the Native Americans” and Homer says “Like me.” Of course Lisa then says, “No, American Indians” and Apu says “Like me.” Heck, my friend Megan didn’t even understand the difference between American Indians and Indians from India until I explained it to her. She thought I was joking.

   I guess a lot of racial titles are pretty ambiguous. Like Caucasian really should mean someone from the Caucasus Mountains. There is no non-ambiguous term for Native Americans/American Indians (well, mayve Native American Indians).

   I was thinking about how it’s so much easier for Irish and Irish-American, but I guess a lot of that has to do with the fact that Ireland has had its own cultural identity while the African nations are kinda a production of Imperialism – not to mention that most Aferican-Americans wouldn’t know where they came from in Africa anyway. By contrast, people of Irish decent who don’t remember that they have come from Ireland just meld into the “white” of society.

   I guess that Irish is more of a cultural identification while “black” and “African-American” are more visual classifications.

   After formulating my opinion though this exceedingly long post, I think that black and Aferican-American are two different things. There is definitely an Aferican-American culture that is distinct and the term African-American should refer to people from that culture and who identify that way – like Irish. By contrast, black should be used to refer to the visual classification just as someone looking at me would identify me as white.

3. I think the term “African-American” is a politically incorrect term to use to identify people from Africa that live in the United States.

   So what type of an American are these. South American, Central or North American. That term covers half the earth.

   This term is assumed to be associated with ONLY black Africans, and has nothing to do with Africa because they are black.

   Did you know that all race colors come from Africa? It is where life started and migrated around the world. So, legally, EVERYONE is an African-American that lives in the USA.

   Africa has people of all color, not just black. Some of my ancestors come from South Africa, and I am not black, but I could call myself an African-American. I avoid that term.

   The more people put an identiy on themselves to distinguish themselves with where their ancestors come from, the more UN-diversified this world becomes. It is called tribalism. The Middle-East is full of tribes and they can’t get along now. We don’t need that in the United States.

   I was born in the United States and I my race classification is caucasion.

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