hopelessly devoted to deconstructing popular culture and conventional wisdom, one blog at a time

Racial labels, still crazy after all these years

Published Tuesday, August 31, 2004 by seanlmccarthy | E-mail this post

File under: Only in America
Only in America can an African immigrant from Ethiopia not be considered an "African-American." That's what happened to one man in suburban D.C. Only in America, where people from Central and South America are lumped together as Hispanic or Latino, where all Asians are alike and same goes for the Arabs. And anyone else is white. Only in America, the land where my friend Freddie can be called an Indian, American Indian or Native American, when none of them apply. Freddie is a Navajo. But I call him simply Freddie. He likes it that way. I like it that way, too.