Not a racial Question, but?

I'm American. I don't care about stupid "ancestry". I find it rude. I'm not from Africa, my family don't speak their language, nor have I been to Africa. My parents are Jamaican and Cuban, therefore that's what I am. You don't see people calin white people "European Americans". It's unnecessary.

I've heard people call themselves Polish-American, Italian-American, and a whole bunch of other things, too. It's not specific to a race, people want to identify with a group that doesn't have a negative association. None of the other labels we have are accurate either...I've never seen a "black" person, have you? What does it matter anyway? I'm all for ditching the labels, but I doubt it will happen anytime soon, so we might as well respect people's wishes in that regard.

For the same reason some people call themselves Italian Americans, or Irish Americans or German Americans or Russian Americans or Chinese Americas etc.

But you only see African American as a problem?

It's amazing but 99.9% of the time when someone says it's not racial it is.

We African Americans call ourselves that because, we are descendants of Africa, not America. If you know your history. We didn't sail here alone.You could be German American or what have you. Native Americans are the only true decedents of what we call America. What is ethnic American? I hope you didn't learn that in school. P.S. I'm not being racial either.

My ancestry is Scottish and British. When they came to America, they became Americans. I am an American because I was born American.

Separating ourselves with these ethnic prefixes serve only to create even more discontent. Why do we fight the idea of coming together as Americans? I don't get it. I never have and never will.

I don't want to go to Scotland or Britain and I can't imagine anyone of us want to go to Africa.

They call themselves African Americans, because they want to seperate themselves from the main stream culture. They only drive a divide in America by doing so.

I agree with you. I was born in Canada. I am a Canadian. We would never use the term African Canadian here..it just sounds stupid...no offense to the black people we do have...but this term just doesn't compute to me.

<yawn> this question has been asked a quintillion times.

We don't call ourselves that, white people call us that. 9 out of 10 call themselves Black.

Their ancestors are from Africa.

If they want to be called "African-American," then I want to be called

"Italian- Irish- Swiss- Australian- English-American."

And they better call me that too, or I'll sue them for racism.