> > 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?

I agree completely with this. Labelling skin colours with national labels is plain nonsense. What about blacks who are not African? What about Africans who are not blacks? Why are white Americans not called "Caucasian-Americans"? Why is "black" offensive but "white" isn't? If I ask the PC types, they'll say that it's because the blacks have been the victim in all this racialism, but "white" is just as discriminating a term as "black" is, no more, no less.
Your last comment sums quite nicely up the point in my previous message, that people of African ancestry can actually (gosh!) live outside America too.