OK, I’ll wait for that thread to flesh out this reply:
Lots.
By the way, I can only post in the early mornings or (rarely) the late evenings, so it may be a little while before I can get back to you with an avalanche of factoids.
Reminds me of the Sat. Night Live skit where one black actor plays a commentator telling another black actor that there’s no difference between whites and blacks, but lighter skinned blacks are better than darker skinned blacks. :smack: 
That skit had guest host Julian Bond being interviewed by Garrett Morris.
Thanks. Are you a Walloon-American?
Oui, je suis.
From where this white boy sits, that is a brilliantly accurate use of the phrase. Mr. Obama’s father is from Kenya. He was born here, yes? Does he hold an American Passport? Is he an American Citizen? Yes? Then he’s accurately described as African-American.
No?
Cartooniverse
Some of us were also brought up to use a ruler on the underside of our penis. But, whatever method you chose is fine by me. 
Your posts are indeed incredibly informative and fun to read, thank you for what you have written.
I had something said to me this past weekend that chilled me so badly, it was everything I could do to nod politely. I was to dinner with a couple. This was in the South, in Gawguh. The Mrs. was talking to me about race, and how she was so pleased that I’d described a fellow from earlier in the day as " the guy in the turquoise shirt", instead of “the black guy at the end of the table”.
She then went on to tell me that she was so proud of herself for overcoming the racism her parents instilled in her, and how important she thought that was. She then informed me that it was okay to use the word “nigra”, but of course abhorrent to use the word “nigger”.
I nodded, completely freaked out inside. I know this is a hijack but god, someone reading this thread tell me if this woman was full of shit or if the two words are regarded by African Americans as totally different in useage and meaning.
Cartooniverse
Then why do we describe someone who was born in the US of, for example, Italian immigrants, as Italian-American, and not European-American?
It seems to me that since we know that Barack Obama (just as a prominent example) was born of a Kenyan father, we can and should call him Kenyan-American and not African-American.
LOL. But that guy shouldn’t really describe himself as African, his original racial roots are presumably European. So he gets to just be an American, or a “white dude.”
I would generally agree with Dewey on this point. If Jackson and company (correctly) point out that they need to use African-American as the corresponding term to Irish-American because we destroyed the connection between imported slaves and the lands from which they were taken, then there is no need to refer to a person whose nationality is clearly identified by the term continent-name-American.
(On the other hand, I tend to avoid the use of AA simply because of the way it riles up some people who need something about which to be angry (and because every black person I know, personally, has expressed a preference for the term “black”).)
Kenya is in Africa.
How is it inaccurate to say that Mr. Obama is African-American?
I know, I’m playing devil’s advocate here. I do understand what was written up above, that African-American is used by Americans who are descendants of slaves who cannot accurately trace their lineage to a specific country in the continent of Africa.
Mr. Obama’s father was born in Kenya, hence his ability to trace his lineage easily. And just for the record, that is not his mother’s name. Her name is Stanley Ann Dunham. It is worth noting that his parents divorced when he was 2, subsequent to that time he saw his father exactly once before he died in 1992. He may or may not consider himself to be Kenyan-American. We’d have to ask him. 
At any rate, Kenya is in Africa. The descriptive phrase is neither inaccurate nor belittling.
What is not “his mother’s name?”
And I never suggested that African-American was inaccurate or belittling, just that it was meant to refer to American descendants of African slaves, so that recent immigrants from Africa can be referred to by their nationality instead. Also, that African-American is sometimes incorrectly used as a synonym for “black,” such as in the quote I provided from the New York Times, or in an article I saw years ago that described the “African-American hairs” found at a crime scene.
Why did the teacher need to refer to her skin colour to start with?
Having read Obama’s autobiography, which recounts his efforts to connect with his Kenyan heritage, relatives and reconcile with his dead father – I can state he’s intensely aware of his Kenyan heritage but would not likely call himself Kenyan-American, both for poltical reasons and practicality. It’s also worth noting he does not once refer to himself as an African-American, either, but its also quite obvious that by hanging around African-Americans all his adult life, and marrying an African-American wife, he sees African-American as his adopted culture.
As a descriptive phrase, calling an expatriate from Africa living here is technically correct as long as you don’t bother with pesky annoyances like common usage and being TOO literal. A poodle in heat is NOT a “hot dog.”
What’s the big deal if the teacher did?
-smile- Point very well taken.
Ahem. They were Arabs and Berbers from the sultanate of Qayrawan in what is now Tunisia. Berbers being indigenous to North Africa, this is how I trace my connection to the soil of Africa. The shape of my cheekbones and around my eyes has that Berber look.
Islam was brought to Sicily in 827 by an expedition led by the qadi of Qayrawan, Asad ibn al-Furat, who was of Syrian Arab lineage. The Muslim population of Sicily, in addition to Arabs, Berbers, and Greco-Sicilian converts, included black Africans and Persians.
Cites:
Aziz Ahmad, A History of Islamic Sicily.
Norman Daniel, The Arab Impact on Sicily and Southern Italy in the Middle Ages.
Michele Amari, Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia.
Ibn Jubayr, Muhammad ibn Ahmad. Travels of Ibn Jubayr.
Denis Mack Smith, Medieval Sicily, 800-1713.
Have you read any of these books?
The only Vandal I see around here is you, Tom, what you’re doing to Arab history.
I should have said dolichocephalic. What Fred Sanford on TV called a “peanut shaped head.”
My mother’s side of the family has a tradition of being part Indian, dating from 1790s western Pennsylvania. A picture survives of a 19th-century ancestor with dark skin and non-European features, who now that you get me to think about it, probably looked more African-American than Indian. His son, my grandmother’s grandfather, was nicknamed “Black Mike.” Of course, to the Irish, anyone darker than pale pink was called “black.” A friend of mine, born in Virginia, had her DNA tested and said her Irish genes were traced to prehistoric Iberia (that was very cool comparative Semitic etymology, Alessan) and she was part Native American too. She said there was an African-American writer whose DNA turned out to be all Native American and Hispanic, not African. I wonder how he felt to learn that.
gabriela, this is the honest truth. My rounded butt is one of my most feminine features. When I was a child it used to embarrass me, but now I’m ever so pleased to have this gift of Yemaya.
I doubt that someone with a remote berber ancestry could notice such features when they don’t even appear on actual berbers. I meet berbers every day, and I’m yet to notice any peculiar cheekbones shape, or anything specific around their eyes.
As he died 24 years ago, he doesn’t hold any passport at all.
And he died in 1982, not 1992, as some answers in this thread have said.