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First of all I would like to say that I despise prejudice and would never deliberately offend someone or hurt their feelings, so if I do so to anyone with this I sincerely apologize.
I absolutely refuse to use the term african-american. I have three reasons.
First, unless you were born in Africa and emigrated to the US, you are not African-american. You're just plain American. And that is really all that needs to be said. It makes no difference what the colour of your skin is.
Second, if you were born in Africa it would be more accurate to use the name of the country than to generalize about the continent. I've heard of Polish-American but never European-American. To generalize is to say that all of Africa is the same, and I'm sure its inhabitants will tell you it's not.
Third, I'm Canadian. Those of 'african descent' in my country are not African-american. I'll use African-Canadian if they insist, but African-American is not accurate.
Why are races treated so differently? 'Races' don't really even exist - we're all one race, we just have different features. I don't expect to be singled out for the colour of my eyes or hair, why should skin be any different? Over time (especially in North America) we have all 'inter-bred' to the point where there are few with 'pure' bloodlines anyway.
As someone else (I forget who) said, it's all about whether offence was intended or received. Let's face it, a person can say 'African-American' in such a way as to be offensive. Some words, obviously, were created with the express purpose of being offensive (like that horrible term ■■■■■■). Black is not one of them.
And besides, most 'black' people I've seen are pretty brown. And I'm closer to pink or peach than white.
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