We all have to watch out not to fall into the liberal word traps.

Just the other day, I caught myself referring to a pro-abortion person as “pro-choice”.

To call someone an “African immigrant” isn’t descriptive enough because it doesn’t say where they immigrated to. You would have to say “African immigrant to America” or something like that, but who is really going to say that mouthful?

“Naturalized American from Africa” would only be accurate for someone who has completed the naturalization process and attained their American citizenship, and even then, to say all that is a mouthful and I doubt anyone would really use such a term in real life.

However my white friend who refers to himself as an “African-American” has not completed the naturalization process yet. So, following that logic, we’d have to refer to him as a “Naturalized American to be from Africa”, and again, no one is going to use such terms in real life.

See what I mean? It is just silly. Let’s just call blacks black, whites white, blonds blond and brunettes brunette, etc. When we get caught up in these silly distinctions meant to classify people as a special and separate “class” of American by their heritage, we end up just making people feel more segregated, and less a part of the melting pot with just as much at stake in America as the rest of us.

Let’s just all be Americans.

Let’s not classify Americans by hyphenating them.

Race should be nothing more than a descriptive characteristic, like hair color, height, weight etc.

My wife and I are both Americans, plain and simple. She happens to be black and I happen to be white, but she is no more “African” than a man on the Moon, and I am no more “European” than a Toyota. Our daughter is neither African nor European in any way. She is plain old American, who just happens to be kinda olive-skinned.

but I have to say, I think about the only time someone self-identifies as “African-American” is on television or in a newspaper or magazine article. In real life it just isn’t normally done.

That hearkens back to my original point that the only white folks who use the term “African-American” to describe black folks are the ones who don’t actually know any.

Present company excluded I’m sure.

Interesting you mention the atrocity that was slavery. Just curious, if you think that is what it is all about, would you condemn President Obama for claiming the title”African-American”, given that his ancestors were not brought to America as slaves, and that he was raised by upper-middle-class white folks out in the burbs?

See what I mean? It can get downright silly. He is just a regular American like you and I, only without the bother of having to purchase suntan lotion.

Let’s take a page from the play-book of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He didn’t talk about “African-American men and European-American men” joining hands and singing free at last, he talked about “black men and white men” joining hands and singing free at last. He didn’t dub people “African-American” or “Italian-American” or any of those ridiculous terms that have been made-up in recent years in the name of political correctness.