# I despise the term: "African American" (It's a medical terminology thing) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 27, 2011, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-despise-the-term-african-american-its-a-medical-terminology-thing/604218 "2011-11-27T05:03:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-despise-the-term-african-american-its-a-medical-terminology-thing/604218/41 "2011-11-28T07:37:38Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > If I may advise: don’t call anyone “Desi-something” to their faces. At best, they’ll think you’re trying to hard to be hip, and more likely they’ll think you’re kind of stupid (much as you might if somebody called you “Caucasian-Polish” or whatever). Thanks for the advice, but I think I’ll stay with what the people I know who are of Indian ancestry, and from whom I learned the term in fact, have advised me they prefer to be called. As for others of Indian ancestry or who think a middle aged fat guy is trying to be a hipster, fuck them, because that’s just being stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2011, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-despise-the-term-african-american-its-a-medical-terminology-thing/604218/42 "2011-11-28T14:25:30Z")
Middle aged fat guy or not, let’s not lose sight of the fact that you are _desperately_ hip. **Sampiro** never goes out of style. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Stilettos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/fbc32d/32.png) [@Red\_Stilettos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Stilettos)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2011, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-despise-the-term-african-american-its-a-medical-terminology-thing/604218/43 "2011-11-29T17:35:58Z")
For epidemiology, the problem is actually much more complex than just choosing a word. For the vast majority of studies, race/ethnicity is self-reported. Generally, black people living in the US will report as either black or African American, whichever shows up on the form. If they are particularly put off by the descriptor, they’ll either check other (which skews the results or is dropped from the analysis) or not answer (which results in their data being dropped from any race/ethnicity analysis). Several studies have been done showing that a not-insignificant number of people do not self-report race/ethnicity correctly as compared to genetic analysis of their ancestry. They aren’t lying; they just don’t know. They identify racially based on a very complex social structure, not an in depth knowledge of their personal genetics. This has two important effects: 1) Analysis based on race/ethnicity is inherently biased, sometimes to the extent that it is incorrect. 2) Any correlation with race/ethnicity should be considered as likely to be due to social and environmental issues as it is genetics. A few studies: Multiethnic population in NY (warning:PDF) [Misclassification of American Indian heritage](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12048228) [West African and Caucasian American race and cancer](http://oto.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/02/03/0194599810393884.full) To your textbook, I would wager that African-American is interpreted as a self-reported black person living in the US. It probably does not mean that there is any significant African heritage. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-despise-the-term-african-american-its-a-medical-terminology-thing/604218.md?page=2)