Focus On Education

What is African-American?

I had a friend who was from South Africa. Her family went back 8 generations from S.A. She asked one day if she had kids in the U.S. with someone who was White could her kids apply for African-American scholarships. I said it’s a good question, but I think they base that status on how much melanin is in your skin, so being from Africa probably wouldn’t be enough.
Okay, but don’t most Blacks in the world keep saying all life originated in Africa? If that’s the case, then melanin or not, all of us born in America would be African-American. That’s what burns me up: you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say my ancestors came from Africa, but they left for too long so I’m not African American because I’m White, but say the Jamaican guy who’s family left Africa on the same passenger ship (not as slaves) and wound up in Jamaica then here are African-American. That’s just dumb. That would seem to imply it’s how much time in the sun your ancestors had.

African Americans are a politically correct term for “black people”.

I mean it’s not polite to call them that, so I think they made up African American. I mean they should just be American, because they have no African citizenship.

I don’t call an Italian family that’s lived in America for 200 years an Italian American, I call them White…
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There is just tension between the minorities, and that’s why they probably need to be called African Americans…