<p>I consider myself African American because my parents are from Africa and I was born in America. I don’t really like the term black because 1) It groups people from all difference backgrounds together kind of weirdly…2nd gen. Africans and mixed people and Caribbean people and people who descended from slaves are VERY different 2) it annoys me when people say I don’t act “black”…I’m NOT supposed to! I’m not a part of that culture except by mistaken association through physical characteristics and 3) as my sister says, i’m not black I’m brown :)</p>
<p>If people who don’t know their ancestry want to call themselves African American, that’s fine, but personally I think that the two terms should be defined separately because I think black is better fitting for people who don’t really know what continent their family is from or have mixed ancestry and African American/Caribbean American are better fitting for people who can trace the majority of their ancestors back to a certain region.</p>