"Call black people Black, what the fuck is this African American BS."
This is a cultural quirk I never really understood about the US racial lexicon. How did 'black' become a beyond-the-pale (heh) descriptor? Same thing with the word 'colored' (though the legal associations with segregation etc. make this an easier sell).
The NAACP shows this wasn't always the case and black people can self-identify as black without much issue, so why the neutral (and culturally inaccurate) descriptor for use on television? Did racists say the words with that much of a sneer?
American blacks haven't been
African for over a century now. They're as American as baseball and swivel chairs. Michelle Obama is about as African as Prescott Bush was English. If black Americans go on holiday in any part of sub-saharan Africa, they're seen not as fellow Africans, but as Americans - the men are brasher, the women walk taller, they
look foreign, they
think foreign, they don't understand the local ways.
African American strikes me as a better descriptor of African immigrants. It strikes me as a bit odd. Explain this to me.