This reminds me of a
television interview I saw many years ago. A reporter from one of the major US
television networks (I forget which one) was interviewing black British athlete
Kriss Akabusi after being a member of the
400 metres relay team that took the
gold medal at the 1991 Athletics World Championships.
The interviewer started off with:
"So, Kriss, what does this mean to you as an African-American?"
"I'm not American, I'm British"
"Yes, but as a British African-American ..."
"I'm not African. I'm not American. I'm British."
This went on for some time before the reporter got so flustered that she gave up and went to interview someone else. I guess more than anything else it demonstrates the potential absurdity of political correctness -- this reporter was so tied-up with the idea that the "correct" term for someone of afro-caribbean ancestry was African-American and not Black that she couldn't cope with the fact that many black people are neither African nor American.
Another example exists right here on E2: in CrazyIvan's otherwise
excellent writeup under "sickle cell anemia" he claims that it
affects "...1 in 400 African-Americans". Now this is true as
far as it goes, but it conceals the real fact that it's an illness which
affects people of an African origin no matter where they live now. One of
the kids in my class at school suffered from sickle cell: he'd never been
to America in his life, neither had any of his family. And I'm sure that
the millions of native Africans who have also never been to
the USA but also suffer from the illness would be equally astounded to
hear that it only affects African-Americans.