De- Census- tizing the Standardized Race Assumption

DOES ANYONE ELSE experience this? You ever just go about your business one day on your way to fill out a 2010 Census and someone comes up and calls you an African- American? Immediately you are taken aback like "Woah, woah, buddy this is the 21st century. I HAVE RIGHTS!" How dare someone assume that just because you have beige to brown skin and your hair is of coarser texture that you want to be called an African- American!

Let's break this concept down. Virtually every person with a dark complexion and textured hair is categorized as African- American (at least that's what institutionalized political correctness rulebooks have taught me) so that means if I see a Trinidadian person with brown skin I should call them an African American, even though their heritage and culture is Caribean? Or a British Black person who has never even been to North or South America? And a Black person in the United States whose African lineage was severed hundreds of years ago during slavery should still be referred to as African American? Yet Charlize Theron who was born and raised in South Africa I should refer to as...?

Charlize Theron is more African than I am

I am technically an African- American; meaning I am of immediate African descent (Kenyan) but I was born in North America and maintain American citizenship. I just think Its a super primitive concept, given the migration of "Negroid" humans around the world, to still be labeling  people of our appearance as only Africans. There is race and then there is Nationality. African American is referring to nationality and yet people use it to describe the Black race.

I'm not saying that you are not worthy of being an African or whatever. This post isn't even meant to offend anyone. I don't hate people who are commonly referred to as "African- American," I just hate that the term was put into place in order to respect people's heritage when in my opinion it does the opposite. It makes no sense to group every Black person as African American, not that we shouldn't be unified, but the same way we don't call Polynesians or Inuits Asian Americans, we should not call every Black person African American. It's not endearing or appeasing anyone. All it does is sanction the idea that Black people in America (who have descended from slavery) are displaced and will never form a culture of their own.