The goat is named after the North African region/peoples of Nubia.
It’s not like the Swiss went and named themselves after brown cows.
I think it means you’re really flexible. 
I don’t like this new word and I’ve never really liked African-American either. It seems pretty inconsistent.
People use phrases like Italian-American and Russian-American to refer to people who either have immigrated themselves or are part of a community that still retains much of the homeland’s culture. I would prefer African-American to be used in this way. Since Africa can hadly be considered one culture I’d probably prefer more detail. So someone who still had strong ties to their Nigerian background would consider themselves Nigerian-American. This would be less about race and more about cultural identity. As a white South African who may settle in the US I would consider myself South African-American.
If one is really talking about race or skin color then I do not see what it wrong with just ‘black’ or ‘white’.
I guess all I am looking for is consistency.
It is clunky. Consider two more beautiful choices:
Amerfrican
Amerfican
The first one makes me wonder who Papa Amerfrican is and whether AGargamelican is after him. The second sounds kinda like, “Ahhh, more fuckin!” which is a pretty pleasant connotation.
Daniel
So I’d be an Amerenglirisherman? :dubious:
Naw: Ameribrit.
Daniel
I bet the joke would get real old real soon - I thought that was a clever idea when I first thought of it, but I was twelve at the time and much stupider than I am today.
Those checkboxes are a tool we use to, among other things, examine the comparative status of different ethnic groups. I don’t think it’s any secret, for instance, that blacks and latinos tend to be poorer than whites. I suppose we could outlaw all gathering of data to do comparisons, like France, but we’ve seen that it hasn’t done anything to help ethnic tensions in France. I can’t understand why so many people are credulous enough to believe, essentially, that if we simply pretend racial problems don’t exist, it will magically solve them. We can hide our heads in the sand if we want, but that wouldn’t really make racial issues disappear.
Except that in Africa, the national boundaries set up in the wake of the departure of the colonial powers tend not to reflect cultures in any meaningful way, so very few immigrants from Nigeria are likely to feel a connection to “Nigerian culture”. There’s an actual African-American or Black American (whichever makes you happier) culture in the United States today; there’s not much of an Ibo-American or Fulani-American culture, to my knowledge.
Nope. The people who need these boxes filled in are asking for that information so they can quantify you in relation to everybody else. If you say you are human, that means that everybody else isn’t, and that dog won’t hunt.
Sorry, that’s disrespectful of my German heritage.
I like it. In situations where it actually matters, I think it’s a great new term.
In cases where it doesn’t matter, I wish everyone would identify as “human.”
Germybrit, then? Agermalime?
Daniel
Surely you chaps could be proud enough of your country just to say “American”?
Well, that’s very hold-hands-and-sing-kumbayah, but it’s not practical, and it’s not necessarily even desirable. And there is nothing wrong with using a person’s race as a neutral physical descriptor, at least in many instances.
For example, at my work, we frequently have customers come in and say that they had previously talked with a salesman, but they can’t remember his name. The obvious question is “was it a black guy or a white guy?” If they say “a black guy” you know they spoke to A, as he’s the only black guy, and he’s pretty obviously of sub-Saharan African descent. If they say “a white guy,” then you know they spoke with B, as he’s the only white guy, and he’s pretty obviously of Scandinavian descent. I can’t say that anyone, white or Amerafronublackan, has been offended at being asked “was it a black guy or a white guy.” And A wasn’t offended at being called “a black guy,” any more than I would be at being described as a “short redheaded woman.”
Perhaps somewhat relevant: A no longer works there. We have a new black guy. He’s actually from Africa. I have no idea if he’s an American citizen. He’s lived here long enough, but who knows. I wonder what he’d say if I called him an African American, or any of its variants. (Okay, he’s very polite so he probably wouldn’t say anything. But I wonder what he’d be thinking.)
Not with THIS administration…
Hm, I know that the ethiopian I know tells people that ask that she is american, and immigrated here 13 years ago. She is very specific she is not afro-american but american [and is very proud to be a naturalized citizen - she points out she may have been born in Ethiopia, but she chose to move here.] She does live in an area that has a fair number of ethiopian immigrants [about 20 families in a 3 block area] and they do a fair amount of ethiopian specific things [childbirth celebratons, religious holiday type stuff] between the families. Doesn’t seem to stop her from considering herself american.
FWIW, I know my familial countries of origin, as does mrAru, but we consider ourself american [and not just because our families have been here for 300 odd years either.]
She IS American. But – as you point out – her ethnic identificaton is largely Ethiopian, even if her adopted nationality is a U.S. citizen.
Most African-Americans born here tend to put our racial self-identification (“I’m a black man,”) way before our nationality (“I’m an American.”) I wonder if it’s because many of us simply don’t travel outside the U.S. unless we’ve been in the military or to the Bahamas…?