Where are you from? Being African American is not about U.S. citizenship to me, and I would assume to most black people. I will be “American” no matter where I live because it’s my culture I grew up in.
This sounds like right wing rubbish to me. Are Mexicans who lived and grew up in LA and don’t know a thing about living in Mexico NOT Mexican American if they find out later in life they were born in Mexico and brought over as a baby? That’s ridiculous. If you grow up in American culture you are culturally American.
And, indeed, Nelson Mandela. Someone got really upset with me about that, claiming I was being racist because I didn’t consider the president of South Africa to be American or something. I didn’t quite figure it out, but they got really upset with me.
I don’t know the stats, but I’d guess that “most black people” have nothing to do with America. Africa, as just one example, has a population of over a billion and has a pretty high percentage of black people. That’s not counting those in the other 200-or-so countries which aren’t America.
So, no, I wouldn’t agree with you that being African American has nothing to do with US citizenship to most black people. Most black people, I assume (and I admit it’s an assumption) probably think “African American” means “An American citizen of African descent”.
Of course it was obvious to you - you know what you meant when you wrote it!
It - honestly - wasn’t obvious to me. I’m not in the US. The word “black” doesn’t equate in that way to “African Americans” in my head, and never has.
I’m not trying to snarky. That sentence, to me, did not read the way it might do to you. The fact that you used* both* terms in your sentence made it seem even more to me that you were making a distinction; as you have explained, you were not distinguishing between “black people” and “African Americans”, and were using the two terms interchangeably (which would really offend some of my black British friends, but I guess that’s another thread entirely; and they’re not reading this) and your post makes more sense now.
As far as I understand it, the crime is selling knives to minors, not giving knives to minors, or setting the table with knives for the use of minors, or leaving knives out where minors can help themselves to them. Still, when the law is nonsensical, it’s hard to be sure you can figure out the nuances by applying logic.
Culturally you might remain an American, but if you give up your US citizenship you are no longer legally an American – though you might be an American Australian if you gave up your US citizenship in order to run for the Australian Parliament.
A Mexican American could be a person born in the U.S. to a family with Mexican heritage, or it could be a person born in Mexico who migrated to the U.S. and became a US citizen. The essentials are: (1) Mexican heritage and (2) US citizenship. How is that “right wing rubbish”?
It’s right wing rubbish because it justifies deporting someone who knows nothing else but the U.S. back to a country they have never even been to and might not even speak the language of because they were born before their parents crossed a border. Reasonable people would call someone who doesn’t even have a memory of any country but this one “American”.
Well, some people might argue that way, but I said nothing about deporting people who have lived most of their life in a country but aren’t citizens. That’s a separate issue, which should be debated without racism. You’d have the same question about a person born in Ireland, brought to the US by his/her parents as a baby, and brought up there by the illegal immigrant parents – or even an American brought as a baby by illegal immigrant parents to Australia. Should that American be deported back to the U.S. even though all he knows about the country is what he learned from watching The Simpsons and South Park?
Perhaps it’s some sort of pedantic reference to votes cast in Australia in the 2008 US presidential election, which would have been ‘first’ due to the timezone? Even so, what about votes cast in New Zealand?
All Australians drink excessively, even on work nights, and are hilarious to watch and listen to, especially when Australia is playing New Zeland in cricket.
At least the ones I met when I was there did/were.
Australian cockatoos don’t say “Hello.” They say, “G’day.” I swear! I heard 'em.
Australian spider webs are large enough to capture a Volkswagen, and contain 12,538 humongous spiders.
You know, I saw a few camels when I was driving around from Alice Springs to Kings Canyon and The Rock. I didn’t see a single carcass on the road though, which means they must be smarter than kangaroos.