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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Uh, Theron can claim technically to be African-American if she so desired because she was born and raised (I assume) on the continent of Africa. I was pointing out that that's why that term makes no sense overall. If we are going by continent of origin, what do we call her? European-American because somewhere down the line her ancestors immigrated from Europe? Just call her White.

And, sorry, I lost respect for Elizabeth Warren when I heard she had laid claim to the fraction of Indian heritage she has. I'm tired of white people romanticizing American Indians this way -[b] especially when she seems to have claimed some kind of mixed racial status that she doesn't really experience in her daily life or her identity[/b].

I'm a left-liberal myself and like her politics but I was deeply disappointed by this. To me it shows lack of respect for what people of another race/ethnicity have been through. [/quote]

OMG how many times to we have to go through this?  AA is a designation of identity.  It means you are what you call yourself based on how society perceives you.   The irony is that you clearly understand this, because you wrote the very thing in the bolded sentence above.

If you know this, then you don't have to be confused about the meaning of AA.  Charlize Theron will never be AA because she does not experience life as an AA.  She does not call herself AA.  My Italian ancestors called themselves Italian-Ameican, and that's what the rest of America thought of them when they got here.  Is that label meaningful in my generation?  No, its relevance is limited to discussion about family traditions and religion.

This is not hard.  If you use common sense, you will be surprisingly accurate at the AA designation.  There will be the rare exception.  But it won't be Charlize Theron.[/quote]I'm not confused. I'm arguing that as a category used to describe a whole group of people, it has limitations.  I would prefer "Black" over African-American and "White" over European-American (and please, please don't get me started on the use of "Caucasian," which is completely incoherent).

For example, light-skinned people from the Middle East and North Africa experience prejudice in the United States because of their ethnicity and religion but when they walk down the street in Western dress they benefit from White privilege because they are assumed to be White by people who see them.  And, like the Irish, who were once considered a separate race from the English, they are most likely only a few generations away from being accepted as White.  But they are not by any stretch of the imagination, European-American.  What they benefit from is the cultural assumptions in the United States about people who have that skin color.

But, as many people want to be called African-American, I'm happy to use that term - especially because it's a matter of respecting someone's identity as they see it.  But I'm not going to pretend it's not problematic as a social science category.[/quote]

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