If he's from Africa, why is he white?
The adopted son...South African?
shareThis is the whole problem with the ethnicity-American cr@p. Would this post have began if the character was a Black person who claimed to be an Italian-American? I don't believe it would have. We seem to have this idea that the only people who can claim to be African-American are people who are Black. I would consider Charlize Theron and Dave Matthews to be more African-American than I would those that are born in the US.
shareThis is the whole problem with the ethnicity-American cr@p. Would this post have began if the character was a Black person who claimed to be an Italian-American? I don't believe it would have. We seem to have this idea that the only people who can claim to be African-American are people who are Black. I would consider Charlize Theron and Dave Matthews to be more African-American than I would those that are born in the US.
It's because in our current culture "african/ american" means "black". It does not mean someone originating from Africa now living here, or anything sensible like that. I'm a white guy and personally have never used the term. It seems very condescending to me, or as if people previously implied something bad when calling someone "black". Well I never meant any such negative thing. I call me white, call someone else black or something descriptive yet without any implied extraneous meaning. No black folks have ever let me know they were offended by it, so I'm sticking with it. I basically look at it as what would I want to be called, and that's the best I could come up with it and I refuse to overthink a situation that doesn't merit it. "African-American" is misleading and insulting in my opinion.