If a White person came here from Africa, wouldn't he be African-American?

Question

Take that all you PC people!

Answer 1

A close friend of mine is white. She was born in Africa and her family lived there until she was 7. Her ancestors had lived in Africa for the past 150 years. Technically she has far more ties to Africa and has spent more time in Africa than 99% of Blacks in the US. I asked her about this once and she says that mostly of the forms and classifications she ever filled out during the immgration process and now that she is in the US really say "African-American(Black)" Once she tried checking African-American and the person who looked at her and looked at the form immediately came back to her stated flat out "African-American really just means Black, your form will be rejected if you don't check off white"

BTW a co-worker of mine who is black and grew up in Trinidad mentioned that in Trinidad there isn't this culture of political correctness and all government forms just list 3 race categories White, Black and West Indian. And according to him, in Trinidad, if you are not Black and not West Indian you are considered to be white regardless of whether you are from Mexico, England, America or China. This doesn't really matter because there aren't any real advantages to any race since blacks make up about 85% of the population, whites are about 10% and west indians are about 5%. Plus, "black" is not a bad word. Instead of calling a festival the "African Heritage Festival" they would just call it the "Black Heritage Festival" and people would purposely wear all black clothes to celebrate their race.

It just all has to do with the difference in race relations and less to do with what makes sense.

Answer 2

That person sure would be, that's why I don't understand why they call [us] black americans "African Americans" if we are born citizens of this country.

I wasn't born in Africa, don't know too much about it, except my ancestors were from there. So why am I labeled an immigrant?

And if you want to get technical you should say that whites in America are extractions from Euroupe too, since they aren't natives here either.

Answer 3

Actually I knew a white guy from Africa, he was an African because we wasn't an American citizen.

Answer 4

no more of an Afrikaner- American!

but even more confusing is the fact that in many parts of British colonized Africa there settled south Asians from British-Ruled Indian sub-continent would they beocme then be Asian-African- Americans of African -Asian Americans? -- which I'm sure do exist!

Answer 5

I remember Teresa Hines aka Mrs. Kerry, was speaking to a black group and stated she was the only true African-American in the room. Man, did they verbally attack that little old white lady from Africa.

Answer 6

Yes. Like Charlise Theron.

Answer 7

no. he's not a natural born citizen of America so he can't label himself as an African American.

in addition to that the term African American was coined for blacks- born and living in America. It became a popular term for them in the 70's and 80's because they didn't want to be called black, colored or negroes.

Answer 8

Of course, that's particularly true to many South Africans.

Answer 9

"No, because the Whites in Africa aren't native Africans, they're of European extraction."

In this case Blacks aren't American either since they aren't from this continent originally.

Answer 10

if that person is just off the boat, I say anyone who claims to be whatever-American that wasn't born in that other country is just posing and perpatrating a fraud