About African-Americans?

Question

why when people see a black person in the USA, they relate to them as
"African-American"? Black people who don't have roots in Africa get offended and I agree with them!
They may be from France but have parents from Jamaica. Or they may be British and have roots in Martinque, or french guiana or whatever.
Or they may be from Canada and have roots in Madascar.

Let's stop with the labeling people!

Lance- it is people like you who profiled them that way, not them!

America is the only country where there is culture-labeling.

Well if you don't know what to call them, then you ask them. Or refer to them as dark brown or whatever shade of brown they are.

And not ALL black folks have ancestors who were slaves!

The black folks may not even be american citizens. So how can they be called "american"?

Answer 1

wow! i like you. you are one of the few who has common sense!
thanks for logic.

Answer 2

The thing is I have read questions on here before and some people got really offended by black, then there are some who get really offended by African American. I've heared alot of people on here saying that they prefer African American over everything else. I'm stumped as to what to say, best not to say anything because you will always offend one person. We shouldn't label anybody, but if you can't avoid referring to someone by their ethnic origin what should you say?
To me calling somebody brown doesn't sound very good. I have no problem with somebody calling me white, so why should they have a problem with black. I don't make a habit of talking to people and saying what would you like to be called. I don't talk about their colour at all. I mean if somebody like the police or a person on the television was talking about a black person, what would they say. Who goes round asking people 'what would you like to be called' asking that would more than likely cause offense.

Answer 3

I had a teacher who referred to a student as African-American when in fact she was from Ghana. It was painfully award for several reasons. The irony lies in the fact that the class was "trying to explore alternatives to biased language." The best thing to do is simply tell people a word offends. It is human to overgeneralize. But wouldn't it be great to live in a world where a person was a person...

Answer 4

We are taught in this (American) culture that African-American is the respectful way to refer to black people. You're right; it's technically incorrect because in this great melting pot of ours, we have people from all countries; and people who have dark skin are not necessarily from Africa.

Can you provide a better term? Say, if I'm in a crowd and I want to quickly point someone out, would I say, "That black lady just dropped her purse." Or, would it be more appropriate to use a different term?

Answer 5

I'm guessing someone wanted to come up with a "politically correct" term for black people.

Answer 6

Me too lol.

I call em black. Heck I'm Canadian.

From context I hope people realize I'm not insulting anybody.

Answer 7

Well, the labeling shall stop when....

The moon is in the seventh house.
And Jupiter aligns with Mars.
Then peace will guide the planets.
And love will fill the stars.

Answer 8

they are so afraid of not being able to classify you that they will call you anything even if they are 95% of the time wrong, they will have to create 1000 words for the 1000 shades of the human skin,
hey you brown495 come here!
End labeling now!!!!

Answer 9

As far as I know, the black people in America requested to be referred to as African American.

Answer 10

It's about time someone smart acknowledged that!