Political Correctness...and race.

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My mom is elderly, and calls black people "colored" all the time. I do find it cringe-worthy, but my attempts to get her to choose a different word have failed.

I don't like the term "African-American". To me, this means that the person is an American who was born in Africa or has some claim to citizenship in an African country. Which, oddly, makes Obama one of the few TRUE African-Americans.

Further, if all black Americans are African-Americans, then whites should be called "European-Americans".

On the other hand, people don't really have black or white skin. We should be called "peach" people and "cocoa" people. That way we all sound tasty.

i've always thought african american was a strange term. especially when i hear it being applied to americans who don't even have direct African heritage. there's something about the phrase which screams political correctness and fear. We have the term 'black british'.

Another term that may be related to this subject is 'halfcaste'. I grew up with mixed race cousins and our family (both the black and white side) always used the term halfcaste. only in the last few years, when someone explained what the origins of the phrase were (basically meaning half pure) did i stop using it and start using the more pc term 'mixed race'. it was never used in a negative way and i think that's an important distinction when being politically correct about race.

i come from a very multicultural area and see no problem calling someone black as a descriptive term, yet in more formal situations (such as newspapers) people tend not to. political correctness leaves people in fear of being called racist and having questions thrown at them of why a persons race is relevant. but i see it no differently to describing someone as 'the blonde woman'/ 'the short man'/ 'the plump girl' etc and hate that merely mentionning someone's race is often seen as taboo.

the trouble is, i can see why it is taboo- genuine racism has left us in a state where so much as acknowledging a person's race will lead to speculation of racisim. which is endlessly frustrating.

I don't expect the rules for this to make any sense, so I just try to roll with it, and describe people by other characteristics. The man with the grey jacket, or the woman with the big hat, or whatever. If we focus on those when describing people, maybe we can focus less on the absurdly unscientific idea of race.

In a reasonable world, people would regard Barack Obama as equally white and black, and the fact that people regard him as black suggests that we have lingering ideas about white purity, but no similar notion of black purity. This thinking doesn't apply exclusively to whites, either.

When we took our daughter, who has PDD-NOS, to Chuck E Cheese for her last birthday, she had been playing with a little black boy in the play area, when I heard her say to him, "You're black." (I don't have to tell you, I momentarily cringed...)
When he answered her, "No, I'm brown," I had initially believed he had been offended.
For some reason, I had felt compelled to explain my daughter's autism to the little boy's guardian (she was white, and I believe she was a foster mother or social worker). She was very understanding, explaining that in this age of PC language, we're afraid of looking racist just for stating the obvious about someone's race.
And she was right.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I majored in anthropology so I like precision in labeling human subgroups.

If it were up to me "African American" would be reserved for people like Dave Mathews or Obama's dad ( who were born in africa regardless of skin color) and we'd would just go with "black" for the native born descendants of African slaves in America. "Native American" litereally means anyone who was born here, and thats how the term should be used. For Iroquis and Navajos we would use the term "Indigenious American" or "aboriginal American", and we would definetly NOT go back to "Indian" because the indigenous americans did not come from India.
"Amerindian" was kind of a handy and not particular offensive term that I have no objection to (atleast you wouldnt have to specify "red dot' or "feather" when you use it).

Needless to say that I concur that "people of color" is several kinds of stupid.
Not exactly offensive- it just sounds old fashioned. Its too long and cumbersome. Since every human except albinos has some kind of 'color' the term doesnt mean anything. And if you're using it as catch-all for all non-whites then why not just use the term "non-whites".

Albinos do have colour. You confuse a general term "colour" with a specific term "pigmentation".