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I suppose it’s a matter of semantics, but I don’t agree with this. The rules say that the federal government will not challenge your self-identification. That doesn’t make it the truth. The same Census rules define specifically what “African-American” means. If you don’t fit that definition, but claim that you do anyway, the government won’t challenge you. But you’ll be a liar.</p>
<p>For legal purposes, yes. The government isn’t going to go around giving genetic tests to everyone so racial classification is going to depend on self-identification. Otherwise, social definitions matter. No one is going to arrest me if I call my bed a lamp, and in fact there is no inherent reason why we call the thing we sleep on a “bed” and the thing that lights up the room a “lamp” rather than the other way around. Nonetheless, we have assigned particular meanings to those words, which means that an individual cannot coherently change them.</p>
<p>Of course, there are some more complicated cases when it comes to race and ethnicity, but that doesn’t mean race is just whatever an individual decides it is on a particular day.</p>
<p>As for the man born and raised in Africa who is a fairly recent American citizen: He is from Africa, he considers himself African by heritage (his family has been in Africa for generations), and now he is American. It would be ridiculous for him to call himself Asian-American or Asian, but it is logical that he would call himself African-American. That’s part of the trouble we get into by using place names to define racial groups. They aren’t always the same. How many generations does a family have to live somewhere before one of the members can call him/herself European, African, French, Malaysian, etc.? Why, for instance, do we accept that someone of any race can be British or Australian but seem to have trouble with a white or black person calling him/herself Chinese or Korean?</p>
<p>How do the genetic tests work? How did they know the White Supremacist was 14% black? Are there black markers, white markers, asian markers, etc on DNA? Or is it that they find something in common on the DNA with say, indigenous people from Nigeria? And then how do they know that it is a color marker that is the same?</p>
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It is confusing sometimes. We use different definitions for different kinds of identification. Certainly, a person of any race can be “British,” but only a person who is a member of a certain ethnic group can be ethnically Chinese. The Census Bureau (and most other definitions I’ve seen) defines African-American is a black person. You can’t be an African-American who is not black–it is logically impossible. If you want to self-identify yourself as black, even though you aren’t, the government won’t second-guess you. Harvard might, though.</p>
<p>If we are going to differentiate, it always made sense to me to identify people by color rather than some ancestral country that a person may have no personal connection to. But I understand there is something offensive(?) about doing it this way, but I’m not clear what the history is on that.</p>
<p>Adding also, that I hate, hate, hate being referred to as <em>European-American.</em> Neither I nor my parents nor grandparents lived in Europe. My ancestors left Europe specifically because they did not like it and wanted to be American.</p>
<p>Whenever we have one of these conversations, I always think of Steve Martin in the first part of “The Jerk.”</p>
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Where in the world do they call white people “European Americans”? Surely it’s being used for effect, not because anyone considers it common usage…?</p>
<p>Somehow, I suspect that the white South African who is now an avowed “African American” (wink-wink, nod-nod) would not extend that identity to include all that “African American” has actually meant, and continues to mean in America. In other words, he’s “African American” until it becomes a social or political liability. Lightning probably isn’t any faster than the speed at which he’ll then become just a white American.</p>
<p>As I believe it was my comment that set off this whole defining-your-own race thing, I want to point out again that I was referring to those who are “mixed” race (and more subtly, might not fall into a race category that is immediately apparent when looking at a person).</p>
<p>Carry on.</p>
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<p>Yes, there are markers that are based on certain regions of the world. I believe, from what I remember, there are actually hundreds of thousands of markers on DNA strands that can potentially identify regions of the world that your DNA can be linked back to. This comes from certain family trees and the fact that populations more or less stayed together for long periods of time before individual migration became popular. </p>
<p>There are very large databases that show similarities in DNA both from current populations and bones of generations back. </p>
<p>No, it’s not definitive, but it’s enough for a rough idea. IMO, it’s supposed to be more for fun than anything else (well, for evolutionary anthropologist a bit more than fun, but for the lay person- just fun)</p>
<p>poetsheart – He doesn’t use African-American as a racial identifier on forms. He identifies himself as white, which he is, so he hasn’t “used” the AA label to his advantage in admissions, jobs, or anything else. However, he still calls himself African American, which is accurate – just as an immigrant from Italy would be an Italian American.</p>
<p>The problem is definitions. We don’t (thankfully) use the old Caucasoid/Negroid/Mongoloid classification any more. Using a color classification involves the insulting “red” and “yellow” labels and is incorrect anyway because most of us are brown, beige, or peachy-pink. If we still insist on using labels, then let’s find more accurate labels than ones like African American and Asian American, which aren’t precise and can mean other things. I don’t have any suggestions, but surely there’s someone out there who can come up with a classification system that is more precise without being insulting or insensitive to anyone.</p>
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<p>You will see it occasionally, including here on CC. Google it, and you will see it is not entirely uncommon.</p>
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<p>[European</a> American - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_American]European”>European Americans - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Marsian,</p>
<p>Why do you view color labels as “insulting?”</p>
<p>“European-American” is usually an oddball concoction proposed by oddball folks, in my experience. I attended a planning meeting at a community center once where a woman presented her proposal for “European-American Day” festivities. The crowd was largely made up of white folks, and they largely were unenthusiastic about the idea. No one objected but her festival ultimately was a rather unengaging and flat affair. Now if she had proposed an Octoberfest or the Burning of the Sardines (Spain) or the like, that would have been a horse of a different color…and probably popular.</p>
<p>Bay, have you not heard that “yellow” and “red” are considered racial slurs by the groups of people who have been called those words? It seems rather commonly accepted, at least in my part of the country (North Carolina) that calling a person of Asian descent “yellow” or calling one of the local indigenous groups of people “red” is at least rude, if not highly offensive. “Black” and “white” don’t carry the same baggage. Maybe things are different where you live.</p>
<p>If we all just laughed at people who try to introduce ridiculous terms, it might discourage people from doing it. Instead, we respectfully bite our lips and nod, smiling weakly, celebrating the diversity and multiphraseology of the modern age.</p>
<p>We don’t use the terms “red” or “yellow” where I live. I’ve never actually heard anyone use those terms. I understand that there are historical problems associated with the terms, but I don’t know why.</p>
<p>Our pediatrician was born and raised in Africa, as were his parents, but his name and appearance are pure Pakistani though he has no social ties to the country. The TSA believes he is Pakistani and he gets to wait in the muslim line at the airport.</p>
<p>He calls himself “from Africa,” but it would take a measure of self-importance to call himself “African American,” something he will not do. It is a societal label not intended for him or for Charlize Theron. There is an effort to obfuscate and redefine the label, to cast doubt on its history and meaning. </p>
<p>Native American, though, is completely the opposite. It is about being able to trace your lineage to the Indian U.S. census data. Plenty of Cherokee dropped off the Trail of Tears and never made it to the tribal rolls, thus couldn’t “prove” their nativeness despite its obviousness. A redhead from Walnut Creek who is 1/16th Blackfeet qualifies, while a full-blooded Algonquin does not. This is the only checkbox where they will ask you for proof.</p>