this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
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A black African American
I mean, elmo is technically (South) African American and white as snow
... I guess as opposed to the Elon kind of African American?
Afrikaner American?
… or perhaps like Egyptian immigrants
… or black English immigrants
#justmuricathings
"African American" is such a weird subset of people. Like, aren't all humans from Africa? Then why is this term used only for black people?
Or do they mean to specify the African diaspora caused by the slave trade? But then aren't we wrongfully including people who moved freely on their own to the US, and those that may even come from other regions?
I get that the word is basically a synonym for black people but with less attached prejudice. I'm just sad that we live in a world where that prejudice still exists.
The left broadly still tip-toes so gingerly around any group or ethnicity that they trip all over each other to make sure nobody feels excluded, and ends up making an environment that feels so much like walking on eggshells that nobody wants anything to do with it other than kids who want to earn performative inclusivity badges.
I got very burned out when I was more active in a few groups and half of every meeting was just qualifiers and disclaimers instead of organized action. And in the intervening years it's gotten worse as we've lost more ground.
I get we need to have solidarity for people who don't have a voice, but I'm not sure our species broadly knows how to turn that into an actionable strategy that doesn't push away the very people we need on board, the tuned-out, short-attention-span masses who still equate leftist activism with some south park stereotype.
The term and all the other -american prefixes has always weirded me out. It feels othering with a veil of progressiveness. I often find US progressives almost loop back around to enacting segregation again
Tbf, just using the term "American" can sometimes leave out important context. Cuz of white defaultism.
In certain places in the world, the term "American" usually gets the image of a white person in their mind, sometimes black people, but an Asian person is never in their mind. So like, if you are like on the internet, and you don't say "Asian American", people usually just assume you look like some white hillbilly in the US south.
If I'm running for office or at a polling place or if, god forbid, ICE shows up, I'm just "American", but if racial conflict is involved like if Covid and Anti-Asian hate crimes is the topic, then leaving the "Asian" part out of "Asian Americans like me are being targeted in a wave of hate crimes" would result in a meaningless sentence.
It all depends on context.
Covering all the bases 😀