why are white peepl called white but blacks are called african american white peepl came from europe?

Question

shouldnt white peepl be called european americans bc they werent the first peepl to be in america the indians were but they are called native americans why is that i neeeeeeeed to kno

Answer 1

Because the term white people covers so many countries, even those not in Europe. Also, they do not tend to want to single them selves out like that. They are just happy with the term American. My ethnicity is Chinese, but when asked what I am, I always say American.

Answer 2

Americans covers all of the people that live in/were born in the country. Just as Germans live in/were born in Germany but their parents or grandparents could've come from any other country. Native Americans is specific to the people who were native to america, however, the native americans didn't originate from north america either, they came from the asia region over the bering strait to get here. However, they were here before anyone else was, which means they are by default, the natives.

I call black people black because I also found a problem with calling them African Americans when the lot of them aren't from Africa. I also say that if they're called African-Americans, white people should be called European-Americans. However, we have this whole "Politically Correct" thing and people started complaining that they shouldn't be called black because technically their skin isn't black, etc. So, they started being called African-Americans. A lot of black people also have a problem with being called african-american since they aren't from africa.

It's one of the many mysteries of the world :).

Answer 3

Because back in the 70s and 80s a movement to be "politically correct" started so we decided that we didn't want to call people based on their skin color like black or white. White people should actually be called "Caucasian" and not white people. Personally, I couldn't care less about the PC crap and think as long as we are not discriminating based on skin color, who cares?

Answer 4

It is political correctness. I think they were just trying to coin a term that isn't about COLOR (and obviously, you wanna do away with really racist terms).
However, I kinda think that "African American" is a stupid term. Wouldn't it also apply to some South African white person who moves to America? It's not very precise.

Answer 5

We're actually called "caucasian"...after the Caucas mountains in eastern Europe/western Russian.