Right.
Racism. In Britain, someone who is black and British would be
classified as black British, and in the U.S, a black American would
be classified as African-American. So far, so alliterative. But isn't
this second term a bit... silly? Certainly if you trace the genealogy
of a black American, you'll get to a point when their ancestors lived
in Africa, but isn't that true of everyone? Conventional wisdom is
that homo sapiens originated in Africa, and then some migrated. Now
let's assume that you have an Arab who's from Egypt, and a white
South African. If they become American citizens, and go to, say,
Harlem, and start telling one and all that they are African-Americans,
they'd get a bit of stick for it, to put it mildly. But aren't they
just as much African-Americans as people whose roots are in Cameroon
or Senegal? This Afro-American terminology just enforces the idea in American minds that
all Africans are black. That's an ignorant and somewhat racist view.
Why don't they call all the white people European-Americans?
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