<p>Foolishpleasure: That is because the Native American Indian tribes consider themselves “nations,” as distinct as Spaniards and Brits. They just happen to share the same continent.</p>
<p>About this thread: I attended a highly ranked grad school. The kind of school people attend who were rejected or waitlisted at the Ivies (I was neither; I didn’t bother to apply to Ivies) and grouse about it. In other words, a lot of failrly privileged and spoiled young people. The department of my major had several professors who were LDS/Mormon. Those professors loved the “African” students and hated the “black American born” students. They clearly treated the groups differently. But the school used the African students to pad its percentage of “African American” students, instead of counting the African students as internationals, which is what they were. I had nothing against the African/Haitian/Caribbean black students. It wasn’t their fault racist professors and department heads favored them. But I so despised the blatant difference in treatment, I decided to transfer after a year. The dislike of home grown black Americans was appalling. I guess America’s disgraceful history when it comes to race relations - which the African/Haitian/Caribbean students did not share - was too much baggage for those professors to embrace us the way they did the black “internationals.” Maybe they felt the black Americans had a chip on their shoulders or were all affirmative action admittees. I don’t know. But it felt like being black American instead of black African was to be tainted with the blood of history. Black Americans were reminders of the bad deeds of white Americans in the past; African students were not. They had to feel guilt around us. They didn’t have to feel guilty around the Africans. Anyway, that’s my theory.</p>