> Heh. That reminds me of two of my classmates. One is black and an exchange student from Kenya. The other is white, lived most of his life in South Africa, but now has permanent residence in the US. The first one is annoyed when people call him African-American (since he's not American), and the second one annoys other people by calling himself African-American. Yay for ambiguous labeling.
>

A lady I know gets annoyed when people refer to her as African-American, because she's from Jamaica. She prefers "black." I agree with iwpg; I don't see why that is such an offensive term. Heck, that's how African-Americans used to refer to *themselves*. When the first AA Barbie came out in the mid-80's, she was simply called "Black Barbie," and her box read, "She's black! She's beautiful!" Wow, that is just *so* degrading.

And some "African" Americans are so far removed from Africa, and have heritages from so many other nationalities, that you have to wonder what the point is in calling them that. I think I'll start taking offense whenever someone calls me "white" instead of Irish-American. Never mind that I'm less than an eighth Irish.

Plus, it's a limiting term. What do you call a black person residing in England? An African-Brit?


La"As far as I'm concerned, we're all just people"Zorra