If saying African-American is more proper than "Black". Why are Whites not called European-Americans?

Answer 1

African-American is not more "proper" than black, it's just more specific.Technically, "African American" refers to citizens of the US who are descended from Africans. It also sometimes refers to the ethnic group in the US who are primarily descended from people who were brought here as slaves as opposed to members of black ethnic groups that arrived more recently.

"Black" refers to any person of visibly African descent. So I and my friends who immigrated from Ghana and Jamaica all considers ourselves black, but I consider myself African American, she considers herself Ghanaian and he considers himself Jamaican. Whether their children will identify in the same way remains to be seen. There's such a high rate of intermarriage between black people of different ethnic groups that after a generation or two, most probably will consider themselves African American.

Whites sometimes are referred to as European Americans. And members of white ethnic groups certainly are sometimes referred to as Italian-American, Cuban-American, Polish-American, etc. Why don't you worry about that?

Personally, I've been black all my life and I've never heard anyone black object to being called black, so I don't know where that idea came from.

Answer 2

OK lets start simple.
All Black people in America can trace their ancestry to Africa, even those that come from the Caribbean. They use the term African- American as a way of identifying themselves as both African and American.Some of those from the Caribbean may and do use other prefixes.
Heres a clue. Irish-American, Italian-American...get it?
Black Americans dont know on the whole which part of Africa they came from.
Its a catch all term unneeded by white Americans for the same reason white Americans don't need a version of the NAACP. What is there that needs advancing?

Answer 3

Whites are the majority of people in America. They are Americans and they have made this their own country. They have no reason to call themselves otherwise because "white" is not a dirty work. "Black" carries much negativity. It efforts to make people feel positive about themselves, we foolishly use the the term African-American. That term does not breed positivity because it only divides and separate us further.

Answer 4

Because whitey is the cause of all evil in the PC world.

It's funny when Jamacians are referred to as African Americans. They are not Americans. They are Jamacians.

The best was when on Star Trek, they referred to a black Vulcan, as an African-American Vulcan.

Answer 5

A black dude on a talk show once said, "What's a Native American. I'm
born in America, so I'm Native American."
But what's an African-American? There is more than one race of
people in Africa!
I'm German, and my family's bloodline has been traced back 900 years
ago to Egypt. So I'm every bit as African-American as some dude whose
daddy came from Brooklyn!

Answer 6

I think that this is a great question and they should be called European-Americans because that's where that are from.

Answer 7

The more questions you ask the dumber I see that you are. Most of us don't even like being called African-American since were not from Africa.

You should really consider knowing facts before you ask these dumb questions.

Answer 8

I guess because not all whites come from Europe. I'm not sure why black people use the term African American, because not all blacks are from Africa. Some are from Jamaica, etc.

Answer 9

Actually all of this african-american, mexican-american etc. is all pretty stupid. Why can't we all just be called Americans?

Answer 10

Maybe because we like being called white and black need a more politically correct term since they do not like they way they are portrayed.