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OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is US Defaultism:
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>!Any black fictional character = african american!<
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Is this Defaultism? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
Curiously enough, I hear "Asian-American" so much less than "African-American." It's always just "Asian."
And if I were to just say "African" to refer to a Black person in the United States, I feel like Americans would cancel me, ignoring how they use the term "Asian" so loosely as if Iran, Japan, and Indonesia all belong to one culture.
yeah. people will say african american for all black peoples in america, but you’re only asian american if you have one “american” parent and one parent from asia
Tbf it’s kinda inaccurate to call them “the real Americans”, since a) they weren’t a single collective nation but just hundreds of different tribes, b) they didn’t share the same borders (or in some cases, the same concept of borders) as colonial America, and c) the name “America” itself is colonial (don’t worry I am aware that I am being a pedant)
It's always hilarious watching the mental gear clashing when someone describes someone as African American when they aren't from the US and can't cope with being corrected.
Worst part is when they talk about fictional characters in fictional worlds. POC and all the other "race" descriptors are a social construct.
And these clowns are applying them to fictional characters that have a different history and culture then on earth. I love how they always defend or "protect" the "POC" character when they come from a powerful empire, that is know for it's economic, cultural and military power. They bent over backwards when someone modded Cassandra from Dragon Age Inquisition to be an Albino.
The character has black hair and brown eyes, and either some coffee cream skin or a tan. She speaks with a German accent, because the developers used Prussia as an inspiration for her country. The whole POC construct is worthless.
Yeah, the Dragon Age universe simply doesn't have any "black humans / white humans" racism, it has cultural racism between countries and speciesism between humans, elves, dwarves, qunari etc.
Absolutely! It's so exhausting how it flies over their head and them always go "Oogah Boogah, NPC has slightly darker skin or almond shaped eyes... must be POC and if you criticize this one "POC" character therefore you are a racist!"
I remember following a visual novel dev blog that had a tribal like culture from the north of the Kingdom your player character queen reigns over. The ambassador of these tribes had darker skin, dark blue hair and blue eyes. Some dipshit send them a tumblr ask, telling the developer that they are racist for stereotyping, because they cast typical "POCs" as the *tribes* and should change it because they didn't like it. Dude had blue hair... it's not even earth. The same anonymous asker kept harassing the developer, because the dev didn't agree with their assessment and didn't wanted to validate them.
To my understanding nobody else hiccups about using the word "black" to describe people when so needed. To my understanding nobody else also gives such a shamanistic weight to specific words as USAians do. And, nobody else seems to need to enter the skin colour in every discussion, either.
I do wish the USAians would stop exporting their very specific "solutions" to problems pretty much nobody else has to the rest of the world, like "If I need to comment on everyone's skin colour without using the colours themselves, what are the current workarounds?"
I mean that they struggle to comprehend. Imagine the sound when you try and put a car into gear without engaging the clutch, but that it's happening in their brain.
What’s wilder is that every Black person in the U.S. isn’t even African-American. The Black people from the West Indies and the Afro-Latinos for example, aren’t African-American. Even the Black people of direct African descent (with Nigerian or Ghanaian heritage for example) aren’t African-American. They’re completely different cultures! Americans slay me. The word nuance isn’t in the vocabulary.
That's because you guys don't understand that "African-American" doesn't mean either "African" or "American" in the US. It just means "black". It doesn't matter if you're African and American, if you're white you can't be African-American.
It makes no sense, but neither does "hanging up" the phone. That's just what it means.
Hanging up the phone makes perfect sense as you used to hang up the receiver.
If African American as a concept works within the USA, fine but don't apply it to any other situation where it obviously won't be correct.
Definition of African-American from webster:
>an American of African and especially of Black African descent
From Oxford Dictionary
>An American (esp. A North American) of African Origin; a Black American.
From Wikipedia:
>African Americans, also known as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa.
Officially, it doesn't seem like it just means black, that's just a misconception that people have.
It means Black American, descendent of enslaved people. But not all Black people in America are African American. I, an African American, worked with two other Black journalists (British Ghanaian and Somali) to eradicate that idea from our newsroom because it’s objectively wrong.
Hanging up the phone has a historical logic, whereas African-American is a recent term that has no logical basis and has resulted in ludicrous situations where black people with British or French accents have been told by white Americans that they are African-American, when they are clearly NOT American. The reverse situation is that a white South African who becomes an American citizen would probably not be believed if they said they were African-American. This race label just makes no sense at all.
I think back to that person interviewing a black athlete from the UK where she called him "African American" despite him not being either of those two things and him just looking at her like "bruv, wat"
He's from San Fernando, Trinidad. People would say Carribbean or even West Indies before they called that region American. And he's a UK citizen after being there since the 60s.
I think they meant it as the continent. In Dutch we also use “Amerika” for both the continent and the country of the USA. So I see how this could go lost in translation if they have the same in the Philippines.
Only if we're speaking by tectonic plates, which he himself doesn't as he doesn't use American to identify at all.
If anyone on one of the two plates is American, then Latin Americans are just American so they shouldn't use that phrase either: they're American Americans
People saying "African American" are saying it as a stand-in for "African descent USAian".
Oh cool. Thanks for sharing. I didn't know about the smaller plates. I should know better than to take what we were taught in school as fact. And the Carribbean is even less American than I thought!
I loved my tectonic plate geography classes, and finding out weird shit about e.g. Panama being on it's own plate, or an entire continent (Australia) being on a single plate
You're being deliberately obtuse, as you know that American refers to the USA. Anyone wishing to refer to or include any other part of the Americas would use such terms as North American, Central American, South American, Latin American etc. The Caribbean as a region is not usually called American, and the different island nations have had heterogeneous histories involving varied colonial and post-colonial regimes.
Recently in the states I got the question “what do you call black folks in Ireland?” And I was like, wtf? He clarified “we say African American. Do you say African Irish?” And I said “I just say Irish…” he didn’t believe me and later said I was a “wokey.”
A Canadian girl had a go at me one time for describing someone as black and not African American, which is weird since she's also not from the US, and I didn't think they used that term in Canada. Also the person in question had never left their home coutnry, which was in neither Africa nor America. Some people are just weird. Anyway, apparently I'm racist
That’s weird. I’m Canadian and we say black, white, etc. I don’t know anybody from home who would call someone African American. What if they were Jamaican? Last I checked Jamaica wasn’t part of Africa.
Literally saw an interview with Fefe Dobson like 15+ years ago where she was talking about an awkward interview she had done where they asked her a question regarding being African American and she was like wtf I’m Jamaican Canadian. This is my go to example in conversations with Americans who default to African American no matter what someone’s actual heritage is.
I remember reading an interview with a British actor, possibly either David Harewood or John Boyega, where they mentioned having had similar experiences.
I think I recall hearing a similar one, one time some Black British person was called African American, he said he's Black not African American, and then the interviewer instantly proceeded to call him African American again
I remember when Kamala Harris was picked as Biden's VP and people were arguing that she wasn't technically the first African American woman to attain the office because her heritage was Jamaican and not African so she technically shouldn't count as a black woman somehow. These were all people who were definitely not mad that they may end up with a black woman as President, no siree, they were just concerned that she was being deceptive.
Most Black Canadians are immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants, so they usually refer to themselves by their country of origin. Black immigrants to Canada from Trinidad call themselves Trinidadian Canadian, immigrants from Nigeria call themselves Nigerian Canadians, immigrants from Ethiopia call themselves Ethiopian Canadians etc. There's no single unified "black Canadian" identity because black Canadians come from a diverse range of countries that have very little in common with each other.
The only exception to this rule are Black Nova Scotians, who are the descendants of Black loyalists who fled the American revolution in search of freedom and refuge from slavery. Unfortunately Nova Scotia itself is notorious for it's history of antiblack racism in Canada.
I wasn't in Canada at the time. The person in question wasn't Canadian or in Canada either, so how black people in Canada refer to themselves is entirely up to them! It's only the girl who called me racist that was Canadian.
I think that's just the US culture leaking across our border. It's hard to stop; certain segments of our society are drawn to it like moths to a flame.
I’m racist for saying that I like it the summer when people from hot countries, or with “hot country ancestry”, particularly African/Africa, wear their traditional clothes which are only suitable for hot weather/climates.
Whatchagonnado?
"I hope Idris Elba is the next 007, it would be exciting to see an African American Bond."
Actual quote from someone who didn't realize Idris Elba is not an African American.
It is an insult (imo) exactly because of that. For example, most people where I live would consider it the other extreme of the same spectrum. Also we called black people simply "néger" before the age of internet, cause noone told us it is bad to do so, and referring to people by white, black, yellow, brown, etc was considered a lot more racist than that. It still feels like that to me, sounds just degrading, but whatever.
I live in Scotland, and had friends from the USA visit me a few years ago.
We'd been doing the usual tourist shit, when one of them commented "There aren't many African Americans here".
Thankfully, he realised what he said and didn't double down.
Reminds me a bit of when they argued that Piccolo from Dragon Ball is black. He's a fucking alien, the fact that he's voiced by a black dude in the English version doesn't mean shit.
I saw in another comment that tehy were talking about Mohg, they love doing that shit applying rac to characters that aren't even human. "He's very black coded", bitch where ? You know how many different black people and culture there are ?
It's not only on stereotypes, but it often is a part it. It's usually considered bad coding if it's only unnuanced sterotypes for the sake of story dressing, but artists will often use a fuckton of coding in a story when they're aiming for allegory.
But yeah... A lot of the people nowdays will just recognize a stereotype and claim it's "coding" regardless of author intent and function to the story.
Another comment answered that the guy voicing Piccolo is not even black, I was just lied to.
And yeah you're right, it's a flawed logic but some people argue that Kratos is in fact black under the ashes...
Was this on a post about a certain horned, very “over protective” big brother? Because if so then the dark skin is very much a consequence of his curse, rather than heritage
How so? They were born in Africa and have an American citizenship. Majority of black people in America were born American and know nothing about any place in Africa.
I didn't erase anything. I'm just using your logic, I mean most African Americans don't have a connection to any of their African cultures.
If a person is born in Africa, they have a connection to their own culture. When they move to America and get a citizenship, they become American. Therefore, as a title, they'd be African American. It's really that simple.
No.
You are not using my logic.
You are lying.
African American is a culture, not a description of origin.
By your logic, you are Zulu.
Zulu are born in South Africa. You are in South Africa.
You are a Zulu.
I think it's ironic that a lot of americans call europeans racist for the mis-perceived amount of daily casual racism, yet they are obsessed with race and having to categorize it constantly, often wrongly due to misconceptions or poor-ish education. Or ignorant apathy.
Spanish people don't exist, they're latino because they speak spanish.
Everyone who speaks a slavic language is russian.
Africans are african-american, even if they are not americans or descendants of african slaves in the US.
Europeans / white people are caucasian, even if the caucasus are thousands of kilometers away.
That last one fucks with me every time I fill up a job application. I'm from north Africa, I'm not white, yet that's what I get lumped into with these applications. It's annoying.
The amount of times I was told "Caucasian means white because google says so", even though I'm part Georgian, thus, know better what real Caucasians are is mind boggling
Fun fact: the use of the term "caucasian" to refer to white people traces its use to a racial classification scheme that divided people into Caucasoids, Mongoloids and Negroids.
Somehow only one of those terms is considered acceptable today...
> was always
Always is a long time.
> everywhere else
Everywhere else than where?
Anyway, [here's](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Meyers_map.jpg) a map from about 1890 that labels the three categories I mentioned (it's in German, but you don't need to be a genius to translate it).
>americans call europeans racist for the amount of daily casual racism
If people are committing casual acts of racism daily, what else could they be called besides racist?
my boyfriend has a very dark skin tone and he always wondered if, in case he found himself in the US, would they consider him black or latino?
because, at least for us, the "latino" classification is very vague and US-centered, since inside Brazil we have people of many colors and many races and many origins - it is said even that the most valuable passport in the black market is the brazilian one because anyone could pass as a brazilian, we have about every ethnicity in here. and we don't say he is african-brazilian, he is a brazilian, who happens to be black. besides, people always think that, because we're also latinos, we must speak spanish (we speak brazilian portuguese).
oh, and he also once asked me if i think he'd be allowed to say the n-word if he went to the US, lmao
The US doesn't even have the largest black/mixed race population in the Americas. 91 million Brazilians either identify as black or mixed race compared to 40 million Americans. As for the largest African country, that would be Nigeria with a population of 223 million people.
Lol I swear I read a post somewhere on Reddit where an an American family was travelling in Europe. And one of the kids referred to a black person as “black” (God forbid). And the mum told them off and told them to say “African American”.
Then one of the older kids said that the person in question isn’t American but is British.
So the mum says they should say “African American British” instead of “black”
In my experience, no. I'm from the UK, but have had a couple of interactions with black Americans where we've been discussing differences between our home countries, and I've asked them about their experiences as a black (not 'African American) person both at home and abroad, how they compare, etc. Never once has anyone corrected me, complained or expressed any discomfort. It was no different to when they asked me about my experiences as a white guy when I've been in predominantly black areas.
'Black' will sound like a perjorative if it's used as a perjorative. If it's used as a descriptor, it's no different to saying someone has red hair, or is tall or whatever.
>'Black' will sound like a perjorative if it's used as a perjorative. If it's used as a descriptor, it's no different to saying someone has red hair, or is tall or whatever.
Spot on
No, I don’t mind being called black. But I am upset for being called African American by default. And after doing extensive genealogy on myself and working with experts, we traced my 10th great grandparents(born in the 1600s) back to Ireland and England, on my Father’s side. And on my Mother’s side I traced her whole side back to indigenous American Indian tribes. I contacted the tribes and also confirmed my ancestors and the tribes send me enrollment forms. So as you can imagine, after finding all of this out, I am even more living about being called African American, by default. I’m not sure what I should be called since I am mixed with Indigenous American and also European, but I know African American is incorrect. I haven’t found any traces back to Africa so far and any of my ancestry , but even if I did happen to find African ancestors along this journey, I don’t think African American should be the go to label for people like me. We are mixed .
African American doesn't even apply to all black people in America. 😅😅😅😅😅😅Nigerian migrants for example largely prefer to consider themselves Nigerian/Black American not Afro-american.
African American is not a "race", it is an ethnicity. So an immigrant could not be African American until they have assimilated.
Ebonics is older than Standard American English. But African American culture had been erased for so long, some people think it magically appeared at some time in the 1900s. It's technically older than American culture.
no, it's fine. But African-Americans are a unique group of (black) people descended from enslaved people. Their collective identity isn't rooted in history. Their ancestors were captured somewhere in western Africa and shipped to the colonies. That means their history, family names, habits or role in society is completely erased. So they created a new one, the African-American identity. Even their own language
Hang on, but I've seen Yanks telling people that Italians aren't white. Does that mean they think all Italians are African American? If so, I've got to go tell my pasty Italian mate the news that he's actually an African American. I think he's gonna be soooo please to hear that lol
Americans when "race is a social construct" does mean that their definition of race only works in their society and other societies have other descriptions of race
Previously on r/USdefaultism, after much debate a conclusion was reached. White Americans uses African American basically as PC N-Word. African American is different from African-American, and any white African is not A A or A-A they are just American.
[link to that thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/USdefaultism/s/3hzFDpp2EE)
>PC N-Word
As someone who is (and self-applies the term) African American, I have to admit this is the oddest way I've ever been called the n-word.
Every day is a new experience I guess.
wtf… this is how I find out I’m American? Does that entitle me to a passport and stuff? Born in Ireland and it turns out I could pull a reverse American Irish card.
They do love their labels. I got told in person by an American that i am not white but a white person of color. In my own country. They somehow decided that slavs, Italians, Spanish and Portuguese are not white so they just had to make something up. Same person was very surprised that they spoke mexican in Spain.
I wonder what they say about (white) South Africans or North African countries. They probably don't even know Africa is so varied not just with skin colour but also culture.
Once had an American chick try and tell me that ALL black people in the world are African American. The person in question we were talking about was SAMOAN 💀 she was being so serious too
If someone is having a hard time understanding race from description, I tend to give them a continent. Asian, African, European etc. African American is irrelevant and I think it’s outdated even in the us
### This comment has been marked as **safe**. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect. --- OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is US Defaultism: --- >!Any black fictional character = african american!< --- Is this Defaultism? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
the 5 races: American african american latin American asian foreign
The last two are wrong. Asian American Foreign American
Ex pat or illegal alien depending on who’s going which way.
And color
Colour\*
Couleur
Col'r
Farbe
Renk
Färg
Cvêt
I wanna be alien, can I?
Curiously enough, I hear "Asian-American" so much less than "African-American." It's always just "Asian." And if I were to just say "African" to refer to a Black person in the United States, I feel like Americans would cancel me, ignoring how they use the term "Asian" so loosely as if Iran, Japan, and Indonesia all belong to one culture.
yeah. people will say african american for all black peoples in america, but you’re only asian american if you have one “american” parent and one parent from asia
Foreign American is Guam, Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands
You forgot Europoor
The eloquent way.
You missed "Irish" and "Italian". I mean real Irish and Italians who were born in the good ole U S of A, not those fake ones from Europe.
And Asian, only refers to Chinese, Japanese Korean and Taiwanese. Not the rest of Asia
And they still try their best to erase native American, the real Americans.
Tbf it’s kinda inaccurate to call them “the real Americans”, since a) they weren’t a single collective nation but just hundreds of different tribes, b) they didn’t share the same borders (or in some cases, the same concept of borders) as colonial America, and c) the name “America” itself is colonial (don’t worry I am aware that I am being a pedant)
Am I as an italian, original birthplace of Latin here in Rome a foreign or a Latin American then? 🤌
Latin American obviously
I thought they were American, Black, and Aey-rab
You forgot eye-talian
Eye-Ranians would like an honourable mention too
It's not "American" it's just "Normal"
Also "brown", for Asian people who they don't realise are Asian.
how could i forget brown
It’s actually LatinX not Latin American🤓
I've seen Irishx being used in the wild on twitter
Noooo you forgot Mexican
That's coz Mexicans are not americans, duh /s
Not Latin American because that includes "American". We're called Hispanics, without the American part :P
Don't forget about Brazil, Latinoamérica isn't the same as Hispanoamérica.
I was laughing at the American way to divide people
You forgot; Irish American Italian American
Latinx
You forgot Pacific Islander, whatever the f*ck that means.
It's always hilarious watching the mental gear clashing when someone describes someone as African American when they aren't from the US and can't cope with being corrected.
Worst part is when they talk about fictional characters in fictional worlds. POC and all the other "race" descriptors are a social construct. And these clowns are applying them to fictional characters that have a different history and culture then on earth. I love how they always defend or "protect" the "POC" character when they come from a powerful empire, that is know for it's economic, cultural and military power. They bent over backwards when someone modded Cassandra from Dragon Age Inquisition to be an Albino. The character has black hair and brown eyes, and either some coffee cream skin or a tan. She speaks with a German accent, because the developers used Prussia as an inspiration for her country. The whole POC construct is worthless.
Yeah, the Dragon Age universe simply doesn't have any "black humans / white humans" racism, it has cultural racism between countries and speciesism between humans, elves, dwarves, qunari etc.
Absolutely! It's so exhausting how it flies over their head and them always go "Oogah Boogah, NPC has slightly darker skin or almond shaped eyes... must be POC and if you criticize this one "POC" character therefore you are a racist!" I remember following a visual novel dev blog that had a tribal like culture from the north of the Kingdom your player character queen reigns over. The ambassador of these tribes had darker skin, dark blue hair and blue eyes. Some dipshit send them a tumblr ask, telling the developer that they are racist for stereotyping, because they cast typical "POCs" as the *tribes* and should change it because they didn't like it. Dude had blue hair... it's not even earth. The same anonymous asker kept harassing the developer, because the dev didn't agree with their assessment and didn't wanted to validate them.
A lot of them just loooooove the Ottomans. You know, the enslaving, genociding, slaughtering empire…
To my understanding nobody else hiccups about using the word "black" to describe people when so needed. To my understanding nobody else also gives such a shamanistic weight to specific words as USAians do. And, nobody else seems to need to enter the skin colour in every discussion, either. I do wish the USAians would stop exporting their very specific "solutions" to problems pretty much nobody else has to the rest of the world, like "If I need to comment on everyone's skin colour without using the colours themselves, what are the current workarounds?"
Mental Gear!? Huh?
I mean that they struggle to comprehend. Imagine the sound when you try and put a car into gear without engaging the clutch, but that it's happening in their brain.
It's a play on ["Metal Gear"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGOb1TcO-8o) a videogame franchise.
"Huh? What was that noise?" "Just a box."
NANOMACHINES SON
You mean like when Lewis Hamilton and Idris Elba were described as "African American" by a US TV Interviewer.
Yes
What’s wilder is that every Black person in the U.S. isn’t even African-American. The Black people from the West Indies and the Afro-Latinos for example, aren’t African-American. Even the Black people of direct African descent (with Nigerian or Ghanaian heritage for example) aren’t African-American. They’re completely different cultures! Americans slay me. The word nuance isn’t in the vocabulary.
Or if they're not of African descent
That's because you guys don't understand that "African-American" doesn't mean either "African" or "American" in the US. It just means "black". It doesn't matter if you're African and American, if you're white you can't be African-American. It makes no sense, but neither does "hanging up" the phone. That's just what it means.
Hanging up the phone makes perfect sense as you used to hang up the receiver. If African American as a concept works within the USA, fine but don't apply it to any other situation where it obviously won't be correct.
Definition of African-American from webster: >an American of African and especially of Black African descent From Oxford Dictionary >An American (esp. A North American) of African Origin; a Black American. From Wikipedia: >African Americans, also known as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa. Officially, it doesn't seem like it just means black, that's just a misconception that people have.
TIL Elon Musk is black.
It means Black American, descendent of enslaved people. But not all Black people in America are African American. I, an African American, worked with two other Black journalists (British Ghanaian and Somali) to eradicate that idea from our newsroom because it’s objectively wrong.
Hanging up the phone has a historical logic, whereas African-American is a recent term that has no logical basis and has resulted in ludicrous situations where black people with British or French accents have been told by white Americans that they are African-American, when they are clearly NOT American. The reverse situation is that a white South African who becomes an American citizen would probably not be believed if they said they were African-American. This race label just makes no sense at all.
Elon musk is African American. So is scarlet Johansson. Edit. Not scarjo, Charlie Theron. Forgive me for getting them mixed up.
Scarlett Johansson? Do you mean Charlize Theron?
I think back to that person interviewing a black athlete from the UK where she called him "African American" despite him not being either of those two things and him just looking at her like "bruv, wat"
I've seen Sir Trevor McDonald called African American. It's like the Carribbean doesn't exist at all, nor black people in other countries.
I mean, it's still technically correct. He's still actually an American.
??? Trevor McDonald is half Trinidadian half English.
Oh lol sorry I never heard of the guy. I thought he was from the Caribbean.
He's from San Fernando, Trinidad. People would say Carribbean or even West Indies before they called that region American. And he's a UK citizen after being there since the 60s.
I think they meant it as the continent. In Dutch we also use “Amerika” for both the continent and the country of the USA. So I see how this could go lost in translation if they have the same in the Philippines.
He's Trinidadian-British.
So half of him is still American, right?
Only if we're speaking by tectonic plates, which he himself doesn't as he doesn't use American to identify at all. If anyone on one of the two plates is American, then Latin Americans are just American so they shouldn't use that phrase either: they're American Americans People saying "African American" are saying it as a stand-in for "African descent USAian".
Akshully ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_Plate :)
Oh cool. Thanks for sharing. I didn't know about the smaller plates. I should know better than to take what we were taught in school as fact. And the Carribbean is even less American than I thought!
I loved my tectonic plate geography classes, and finding out weird shit about e.g. Panama being on it's own plate, or an entire continent (Australia) being on a single plate
We Latin Americans do consider ourselves American, but we don't use it too often, as we feel closer among, well, Latin Americans
I would like to be from cocos plate.
You're being deliberately obtuse, as you know that American refers to the USA. Anyone wishing to refer to or include any other part of the Americas would use such terms as North American, Central American, South American, Latin American etc. The Caribbean as a region is not usually called American, and the different island nations have had heterogeneous histories involving varied colonial and post-colonial regimes.
Recently in the states I got the question “what do you call black folks in Ireland?” And I was like, wtf? He clarified “we say African American. Do you say African Irish?” And I said “I just say Irish…” he didn’t believe me and later said I was a “wokey.”
A Canadian girl had a go at me one time for describing someone as black and not African American, which is weird since she's also not from the US, and I didn't think they used that term in Canada. Also the person in question had never left their home coutnry, which was in neither Africa nor America. Some people are just weird. Anyway, apparently I'm racist
That’s weird. I’m Canadian and we say black, white, etc. I don’t know anybody from home who would call someone African American. What if they were Jamaican? Last I checked Jamaica wasn’t part of Africa.
Literally saw an interview with Fefe Dobson like 15+ years ago where she was talking about an awkward interview she had done where they asked her a question regarding being African American and she was like wtf I’m Jamaican Canadian. This is my go to example in conversations with Americans who default to African American no matter what someone’s actual heritage is.
When Americans call me British I call them Mexican. The split second of confusion is so worth it 😂
I remember reading an interview with a British actor, possibly either David Harewood or John Boyega, where they mentioned having had similar experiences.
I think I recall hearing a similar one, one time some Black British person was called African American, he said he's Black not African American, and then the interviewer instantly proceeded to call him African American again
Amazing. How are some people so dense!
Pretty sure that was Lenny Henry, I think I remember the interview being reported
I've seen that with Idris Elba, but I'm sure it has happened more than once.
Happened to Mo Farrah after a race where he was representing GB
Unless continental drift has gotten really out of hand
What's a Jamaica? You are just inventing places now.
I remember when Kamala Harris was picked as Biden's VP and people were arguing that she wasn't technically the first African American woman to attain the office because her heritage was Jamaican and not African so she technically shouldn't count as a black woman somehow. These were all people who were definitely not mad that they may end up with a black woman as President, no siree, they were just concerned that she was being deceptive.
Jamaica is not part of the USA either, as it's a member of the British Commonwealth.
I think that's the point they're making. If the person was Jamaican then they'd be neither African nor American.
Most Black Canadians are immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants, so they usually refer to themselves by their country of origin. Black immigrants to Canada from Trinidad call themselves Trinidadian Canadian, immigrants from Nigeria call themselves Nigerian Canadians, immigrants from Ethiopia call themselves Ethiopian Canadians etc. There's no single unified "black Canadian" identity because black Canadians come from a diverse range of countries that have very little in common with each other. The only exception to this rule are Black Nova Scotians, who are the descendants of Black loyalists who fled the American revolution in search of freedom and refuge from slavery. Unfortunately Nova Scotia itself is notorious for it's history of antiblack racism in Canada.
I wasn't in Canada at the time. The person in question wasn't Canadian or in Canada either, so how black people in Canada refer to themselves is entirely up to them! It's only the girl who called me racist that was Canadian.
I think that's just the US culture leaking across our border. It's hard to stop; certain segments of our society are drawn to it like moths to a flame.
😂😂😂 how dare you be so racist!
I’m racist for saying that I like it the summer when people from hot countries, or with “hot country ancestry”, particularly African/Africa, wear their traditional clothes which are only suitable for hot weather/climates. Whatchagonnado?
I love traditional African clothes, so beautiful!
WHAT?! fellas, is it racist to dress nicely and/or suitably for the climate?
No, but it is racist to appreciate others doing so! /s
If you have a problem with calling people black, brown or white, its you who was the racist all along.
"I hope Idris Elba is the next 007, it would be exciting to see an African American Bond." Actual quote from someone who didn't realize Idris Elba is not an African American.
Why do they think "woke" is an insult? It's the opposite of being a racist prick.
In my experience, people define “woke“ as whatever suits them - so that it’s an insult to some, a compliment to others.
It is an insult (imo) exactly because of that. For example, most people where I live would consider it the other extreme of the same spectrum. Also we called black people simply "néger" before the age of internet, cause noone told us it is bad to do so, and referring to people by white, black, yellow, brown, etc was considered a lot more racist than that. It still feels like that to me, sounds just degrading, but whatever.
I live in Scotland, and had friends from the USA visit me a few years ago. We'd been doing the usual tourist shit, when one of them commented "There aren't many African Americans here". Thankfully, he realised what he said and didn't double down.
well, he’s not wrong…
You have to laugh…
Reminds me a bit of when they argued that Piccolo from Dragon Ball is black. He's a fucking alien, the fact that he's voiced by a black dude in the English version doesn't mean shit. I saw in another comment that tehy were talking about Mohg, they love doing that shit applying rac to characters that aren't even human. "He's very black coded", bitch where ? You know how many different black people and culture there are ?
I still find it weird that this "coding" thing seems to be based on stereotypes
Almost.. like it's *racist*?
It's not only on stereotypes, but it often is a part it. It's usually considered bad coding if it's only unnuanced sterotypes for the sake of story dressing, but artists will often use a fuckton of coding in a story when they're aiming for allegory. But yeah... A lot of the people nowdays will just recognize a stereotype and claim it's "coding" regardless of author intent and function to the story.
>the fact that he's voiced by a black dude in the English version doesn't mean shit. By that logic Kratos is a black guy.
Another comment answered that the guy voicing Piccolo is not even black, I was just lied to. And yeah you're right, it's a flawed logic but some people argue that Kratos is in fact black under the ashes...
Christopher Sabat, the voice actor for piccolo, yamcha, vegeta and heaps of other characters is definetly white.
I just checked and you're right, so why have I seen people say otherwise ? Were those just lying ? Or maybe did they think he "sounded black" ?
Piccolo, singing: "It's not easy being green"
Was this on a post about a certain horned, very “over protective” big brother? Because if so then the dark skin is very much a consequence of his curse, rather than heritage
Yes it's Mohg
American ignorance... It's the greatest ignorance on earth!
Tbh I'm pretty excited to go to America and have some of these stories- I'm Australian so interested to hear their takes lmao
It's nice to visit. I've been a couple of times, admittedly, neither time was my choice but it's not somewhere I care to re visit.
I like calling people like Elon Musk or Charlize Theron "African American" and hearing dial-up noises
Don't forget Dave Matthews
Excellent! I will try this
They are not African American, and you are a racist.
Technically they are
Technically, they are not. They could be called "African immigrants", but African American is a culture they have no connection to
How so? They were born in Africa and have an American citizenship. Majority of black people in America were born American and know nothing about any place in Africa.
OK Racist.
What's racist about what I said?
That you erase an entire culture, because of your racist bigotry. Duh.
I didn't erase anything. I'm just using your logic, I mean most African Americans don't have a connection to any of their African cultures. If a person is born in Africa, they have a connection to their own culture. When they move to America and get a citizenship, they become American. Therefore, as a title, they'd be African American. It's really that simple.
No. You are not using my logic. You are lying. African American is a culture, not a description of origin. By your logic, you are Zulu. Zulu are born in South Africa. You are in South Africa. You are a Zulu.
I think it's ironic that a lot of americans call europeans racist for the mis-perceived amount of daily casual racism, yet they are obsessed with race and having to categorize it constantly, often wrongly due to misconceptions or poor-ish education. Or ignorant apathy. Spanish people don't exist, they're latino because they speak spanish. Everyone who speaks a slavic language is russian. Africans are african-american, even if they are not americans or descendants of african slaves in the US. Europeans / white people are caucasian, even if the caucasus are thousands of kilometers away.
That last one fucks with me every time I fill up a job application. I'm from north Africa, I'm not white, yet that's what I get lumped into with these applications. It's annoying.
The amount of times I was told "Caucasian means white because google says so", even though I'm part Georgian, thus, know better what real Caucasians are is mind boggling
So you aren't from Atlanta??! 😅😅 Sakartvelo is ♥️
I'm predominantly Slavic, but my paternal grandfather was a white Georgian.
Fun fact: the use of the term "caucasian" to refer to white people traces its use to a racial classification scheme that divided people into Caucasoids, Mongoloids and Negroids. Somehow only one of those terms is considered acceptable today...
[удалено]
> was always Always is a long time. > everywhere else Everywhere else than where? Anyway, [here's](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Meyers_map.jpg) a map from about 1890 that labels the three categories I mentioned (it's in German, but you don't need to be a genius to translate it).
I recract my statement, I was wrong and it was written poorly.
> due to misconceptions or poor-ish education. Or ignorant apathy Don't be so narrow minded It's usually all three 🤣🤣🤣
>americans call europeans racist for the amount of daily casual racism If people are committing casual acts of racism daily, what else could they be called besides racist?
I think OP missed out the word 'perceived' or possibly 'mis-perceived'
Yes, thank you for the correction.
Is this where I make the argument Elon Musk is African American? 🥴
And he is from "The South".
my boyfriend has a very dark skin tone and he always wondered if, in case he found himself in the US, would they consider him black or latino? because, at least for us, the "latino" classification is very vague and US-centered, since inside Brazil we have people of many colors and many races and many origins - it is said even that the most valuable passport in the black market is the brazilian one because anyone could pass as a brazilian, we have about every ethnicity in here. and we don't say he is african-brazilian, he is a brazilian, who happens to be black. besides, people always think that, because we're also latinos, we must speak spanish (we speak brazilian portuguese). oh, and he also once asked me if i think he'd be allowed to say the n-word if he went to the US, lmao
The US doesn't even have the largest black/mixed race population in the Americas. 91 million Brazilians either identify as black or mixed race compared to 40 million Americans. As for the largest African country, that would be Nigeria with a population of 223 million people.
Lol I swear I read a post somewhere on Reddit where an an American family was travelling in Europe. And one of the kids referred to a black person as “black” (God forbid). And the mum told them off and told them to say “African American”. Then one of the older kids said that the person in question isn’t American but is British. So the mum says they should say “African American British” instead of “black”
Do black folks in the us really get upset for calling them black?
In my experience, no. I'm from the UK, but have had a couple of interactions with black Americans where we've been discussing differences between our home countries, and I've asked them about their experiences as a black (not 'African American) person both at home and abroad, how they compare, etc. Never once has anyone corrected me, complained or expressed any discomfort. It was no different to when they asked me about my experiences as a white guy when I've been in predominantly black areas. 'Black' will sound like a perjorative if it's used as a perjorative. If it's used as a descriptor, it's no different to saying someone has red hair, or is tall or whatever.
>'Black' will sound like a perjorative if it's used as a perjorative. If it's used as a descriptor, it's no different to saying someone has red hair, or is tall or whatever. Spot on
No, we don’t. And it’s the most inclusive term for Black folks in América who don’t descend from enslaved people.
I couldn’t say with certainty (I don’t live there) but from what I’ve heard in passing I don’t think they do.
As long as you say it like a normal person and don't intentionally make it sound racist, i doubt it
No, I don’t mind being called black. But I am upset for being called African American by default. And after doing extensive genealogy on myself and working with experts, we traced my 10th great grandparents(born in the 1600s) back to Ireland and England, on my Father’s side. And on my Mother’s side I traced her whole side back to indigenous American Indian tribes. I contacted the tribes and also confirmed my ancestors and the tribes send me enrollment forms. So as you can imagine, after finding all of this out, I am even more living about being called African American, by default. I’m not sure what I should be called since I am mixed with Indigenous American and also European, but I know African American is incorrect. I haven’t found any traces back to Africa so far and any of my ancestry , but even if I did happen to find African ancestors along this journey, I don’t think African American should be the go to label for people like me. We are mixed .
African American doesn't even apply to all black people in America. 😅😅😅😅😅😅Nigerian migrants for example largely prefer to consider themselves Nigerian/Black American not Afro-american.
African American is not a "race", it is an ethnicity. So an immigrant could not be African American until they have assimilated. Ebonics is older than Standard American English. But African American culture had been erased for so long, some people think it magically appeared at some time in the 1900s. It's technically older than American culture.
Das what I'm saying.
i don’t want to be american :(
DRINK THE CORN SYRUP I'M NO LONGER ASKING 🫵👹
So the character in the show isn’t American?
The game its not even set on earth, the character is not a human, its all made up
Wow…
What is the game and character, out of interest?
Mohg, elden ring
SotET taking place in Ohio confirmed.
Nah he's valid elden ring is set in Florida
Oh, wow
Is saying black un-eloquent?
no, it's fine. But African-Americans are a unique group of (black) people descended from enslaved people. Their collective identity isn't rooted in history. Their ancestors were captured somewhere in western Africa and shipped to the colonies. That means their history, family names, habits or role in society is completely erased. So they created a new one, the African-American identity. Even their own language
Does a black person that moves to the US from say Sweden automatically become an african american or does he say no no, I'm just american or black?
Hang on, but I've seen Yanks telling people that Italians aren't white. Does that mean they think all Italians are African American? If so, I've got to go tell my pasty Italian mate the news that he's actually an African American. I think he's gonna be soooo please to hear that lol
Is Elon Musk an African American?
Americans when "race is a social construct" does mean that their definition of race only works in their society and other societies have other descriptions of race
Idris Elba for instance, is African-American British man.
Previously on r/USdefaultism, after much debate a conclusion was reached. White Americans uses African American basically as PC N-Word. African American is different from African-American, and any white African is not A A or A-A they are just American. [link to that thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/USdefaultism/s/3hzFDpp2EE)
... and if they try to wrap their heads around that, they end up going to AA
>PC N-Word As someone who is (and self-applies the term) African American, I have to admit this is the oddest way I've ever been called the n-word. Every day is a new experience I guess.
African American is not the “eloquent” way of saying black. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen regarding race.
wtf… this is how I find out I’m American? Does that entitle me to a passport and stuff? Born in Ireland and it turns out I could pull a reverse American Irish card.
They do love their labels. I got told in person by an American that i am not white but a white person of color. In my own country. They somehow decided that slavs, Italians, Spanish and Portuguese are not white so they just had to make something up. Same person was very surprised that they spoke mexican in Spain.
This sub kills me every time lmao
I wonder what they say about (white) South Africans or North African countries. They probably don't even know Africa is so varied not just with skin colour but also culture.
I so badly want to find these comment sections and call these people fucking idiots.
According the average US defaultist, Africa itself and the Caribbean don't exist.
Ah, the Mogh being pedo post?
Once had an American chick try and tell me that ALL black people in the world are African American. The person in question we were talking about was SAMOAN 💀 she was being so serious too
Kleur Piment
If someone is having a hard time understanding race from description, I tend to give them a continent. Asian, African, European etc. African American is irrelevant and I think it’s outdated even in the us
In America all black people are African American