well here's something that should piss you off, then (pisses me off too). At the school I teach at we have a very large Somali population, most of whom are directly from Somalia or from other Somali speaking countries, most notably Kenya. We also have a sizeable African American population. Clearly these two populations are COMPLETELY distict groups.
Now, public schools have to categorize and report the percentage of various ethnicities that show up in their student population. So we have caucasion/white, hispanic, eastern european, so on and so forth. Now you'd think that we'd have separate categories for african americans and those from the Somoli region (I don't expect them to get so specific as actual country of origion for these reports, but the Somali region is quite large and, well, we have a lot of 'em). You'd also expect that our Ehtiopian students (of whome we have a fair number) would be categorized separately, as they are quite distinct.
Nope, all of them get lumped into one category, and while this category is an acronym which stands for each of these ethnicities, in reality it just means black. We'll cut and hash out all the different kinds of white brown red and yellow, but if you're black you're black. That's it.
And it is!! Complete and utte bullshit!! I don't let anyone refer to me as african-american, becasue I am not. I am Keyan or an Israelite. I accept one of those. But bwing black is so diveres, around the wrold, that its bullshit to let everyone be lumped into the same category. Asian people can choose between being japenese, chinese, taiwanese, korean..etc... I just want the same ability.
Well at least I know now what ethnicities you link yourself to, as I know oh-so-very-little about your cultural past (or at least I did until very recently, thanks for all the posts, they've been illuminating). That's the other appalling thing about all of this; American culture doesn't just hand us well-minded white folks with the symantic variation required to know what to call who. I'm learning so much here about how to actually identify various African ethnicities by common facial characteristics and accents. It's really quite liberating to be able to say "I met this Kenyan guy yesterday" as opposed to "I met this black guy yesterday." The differences are earth shattering.
Now, public schools have to categorize and report the percentage of various ethnicities that show up in their student population. So we have caucasion/white, hispanic, eastern european, so on and so forth. Now you'd think that we'd have separate categories for african americans and those from the Somoli region (I don't expect them to get so specific as actual country of origion for these reports, but the Somali region is quite large and, well, we have a lot of 'em). You'd also expect that our Ehtiopian students (of whome we have a fair number) would be categorized separately, as they are quite distinct.
Nope, all of them get lumped into one category, and while this category is an acronym which stands for each of these ethnicities, in reality it just means black. We'll cut and hash out all the different kinds of white brown red and yellow, but if you're black you're black. That's it.
Bullshit.
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