If a person is born in America, why would they want to be called an African-American, Spanish-American, etc.?

Question

I understand that their history goes back to another country, but they were born in America. That makes them an American. Plan and simple. Otherwise, if we all were to include or history, most of us would be something like a Dutch-German-English-Amercian or Spanish-Poland-Swedish-American or .....

Answer 1

I agree, if you were born in the United States then you are American. Then if you want to talk about the different cultures then you would say my ancestors are from (place country here).

I think the only time you would use African American is if you were born in Africa and then became a U.S. citizen.

People just need to stop classifying themselves and just relize that we are all human beings.

Answer 2

I posted a question regarding a similar issue. The question was in regards to a recent episode of "The Point" which stated that breaking into subcultures actually promoted prejudice rather than brings groups together. I wanted to know others' opinions on this.Yahoo!answers pulled it off stating that it was prejudice. I wrote a reply back to them stating that if anything it was just the opposite but I never got a response back.
At the risk of my answer being pulled, I agree with you. We should just be referring to each other as simply Americans. To do otherwise promotes prejudice. Furthermore, it does not seem like people within these groups use the terms. Almost every week I read in a local editorial where people are speaking out against being broken into subgroups but yet it continues to happen. These terms are usually used from an outside group that has been brought up that it was "politically correct" to do so. It makes you wonder just who decides what is "politically correct" anyway.

Answer 3

Many immigrants who came to the US were branded as being other than Americans. The Irish, the Chinese, the Mexicans, and of course the blacks. Think of all the derisive nicknames that these groups are called.

They identify themselves as "Ethnicity"-American to show pride in their heritage, to counter those nicknames and to underscore that they are American. If earlier generations of Americans had been welcoming and inclusive of who was an American, then we would not have all of these hyphenated American groups today.

Answer 4

It denotes their ancestral ethnicity.

I once had a Friend named Joe. He was a really neat guy. I would talk about him a lot to my friends and family. Several months later Joe came to visit my home. Everyone was shocked to discover that Joe was black. The shock was quickly over come when they learned that Joe was everything I told them as being my friend. I never revealed his ethnicity out of simple neglect to label him as being black. To me Joe was not black, he was my friend.

This is a true story.

Eventually Joe moved away from the area for business and we lost contact with each other.

Answer 5

I agree. I think that unless you personally emigrated from another country to the U.S., you should not add an ethnic prefix. I think it was introduced to be a guilt trip (e.g. I'm African-American...Your ancestors enslaved my ancestors, so you owe me...) and it worked, and became culturally accepted, so that people call ethnic people ______-American without truly realizing why.

Answer 6

because we are so pc these days we are americans if you are born in america. why arent white people called european americans? see! the same way we cant say merry christmas at work or school so we say xmas but jewish people say happy hanikah. we did this to ourselves we offend people nowadays for every little thing.

Answer 7

Heritage.

Answer 8

Some people appreciate their roots and therefore want to add their heritage of origin to their ethnicity.

Answer 9

Everyone wants to be special, to help their self esteem. Claiming historical heritage as well as their modern one helps people to feel like they are special and unique.

Answer 10

I asked the same question a month ago and all I got was every one yelling "RACISM"