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As a biracial African/Irish person born and raised in London, the term "African-American" has always puzzled me. WHAT DOES THAT TERM MEAN? I am always baffled as to what I should write on those racial profiling forms that seem to accompany job applications or anything to do with the government so I generally write OTHER, am I then not black?
Hispanic-American essentially covers the spectrum, on seeing that checked on a form one assumes that the person is of Latino descent.

African-American implies that all black people in America originated from Africa and this is not the case.
Originally the slave traders did bring many slaves from Africa to the Americas but this also included people from the Caribbean all blacks that are in America are not African American.
A few years ago I was working on a military base as dental assistant, on this particular day we had a group of Royal Marines from England come for treatment.
My first patient was a black officer who was outraged and wanted an explanation as to why he had to put what race he was on one of the forms.
I explained to him that it was procedure, in a way a from of protection to ensure that minorities were being treated just as fairly as everyone else.
After I had finished his treatment as I was putting all his paperwork into a chart to file away I glanced at the sheet which had asked Race, he had written 100 meters. I laughed like a drain he was so right.

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