Talk:African-American

Usage notes
In the Usage section, is this note, "This term is preferred to black by some blacks," facetious?

RFD discussion
"SoP" entries. Sets a bad precedent for thousands of similar entries (ex. Korean American, Cuban American, Mexican American, and so on). --TBC  22:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * keep Submit for RfV just like anything else. There are usually important as preferred alternatives to usually non-SoP pejoratives. Usage notes alone on each subject would warrant their inclusion. I would suggest that we should have at least one attestable non-pejorative demonym (?) for every ethnic grouping for which we have a pejorative demonym. DCDuring TALK 22:41, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete American-born Chinese and British-born Chinese; keep Sicilian-American and African-American. I'll see if I can dredge up the classic Nelson Mandela quote using "African-American" where an idiot American reporter "corrected" him about the term and Mandela explained that the black people of Africa were not actually African-American. African-American in particular is not sum of parts, since it is not used to refer to Americans of North African descent or to white Americans of South African descent. --EncycloPetey 00:42, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think that these ought to be treated en masse, as EP's views suggest. There may be very different merits for each. I often find that the effort of citing the entries leads to an adjustment of the definitions that clarifies the usage of the terms. DCDuring TALK 01:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * That logic doesn't really apply to the [Sicilian-American entry, but I can see why the African-American entry isn't completely SoP. If it's necessary, I'm for separating this request, as per EP's comments.--TBC  02:42, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Separate these, per above. Otherwise, keep African-American per EP's Maghreb comment, and delete all the rest unless a good argument is made for any.—msh210 ℠ 22:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Kept African-American, Split up other discussions--Jackofclubs 06:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Delete --Jackofclubs 06:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete, ridiculous entry. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:19, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Delete --Jackofclubs 06:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete, ridiculous entry. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:19, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Delete as the current SoP definition. --Jackofclubs 06:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Deleted. It was transwikied from Wikipedia when a short dictionary definition was wrote, but having it here is redundant. Anyone with enough encyclopedic information should simply write at Wikipedia.--Jusjih 03:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect definition
I don't believe this definition is correct, as this term should not and is not used to refer to Australian Aborigines, Papuans, etc.:

" (nonstandard, US) Any black person. "

71.66.97.228 16:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with the above poster. This is insane. Nelson Mandela is not "African-American", Naomi Campbell is not "African-American", neither of them are American, so how can they be African-American? If people use the term African-American to mean any black person then they are using it wrongly, it's not a nonstandard definition, it's just a completely mistaken use of the term. I can't believe you will find any dictionary or reputable source that will support this definition.94.173.10.78 08:40, 2 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah. People will sometimes used the term "African-American" incorrectly to refer to black people that aren't from the United States. This mistake should be mentioned in the usage notes, which I have added.


 * Y'all aren't really making sense. I mean, the original commenter's comment makes sense: (s)he claims that the term is not used this way. That claim is mistaken, but at least it's coherent. But the latter two commenters' comments are self-contradictory. People use the term this way, and it's nonstandard. You obviously accept that people use this way, and you obviously consider it nonstandard. So you're objecting to the entry containing information that you agree with, on the grounds that . . . you don't like the information? You find it too NPOV? What? —Ruakh TALK 04:03, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Obama is African American
Former U.S. President Obama is African American. His father was Kenyan. The usage notes seem to be poorly written, accidentally excluding Obama. Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:33, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I attempted to correct the issue to include President Obama- let me know if there are any concerns. (Obama's father was not an American immigrant as far as I know.) Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:39, 20 June 2020 (UTC)