OT African Americans Was RE: Librarians,

I had fun a few years ago.  We were living up in Michigan and were
having a
dinner party.  One couple were on the less enlightened side.  I told
them
one of the other couples coming would be African American so they could
be
"warned".  They said "Oh no problem at all".

Day of the party they looked around quite a bit and as we sat down for
dinner the husband took me aside and asked about the African Americans. 
I
pointed to a an obviously Caucasian couple at the table and said "Tom
and
Nancy are African Americans,  emigrated here from South Africa years
ago.

To their credit they laughed and I think they even got the point.

Bob

PS The above does not mean to be derogatory to any race/color/country of
origin.  It is meant as an amusing anecdote to somewhat illustrate human
nature and the strangeness of man.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
> [mailto:owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU]On Behalf Of John
Lambshead
> Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 10:56 AM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: Re: Librarians, was RE: [SG] HAMR
> Oh, I believe it. I watched an apparently sober American academic
explain
> how Cleopatra was 'African American' (and I thought she was the
> Macedonian
> Queen of Egypt). Poor old Trevor McDonald was introduced on
> American TV as
> African-American (he is actually Oxbridge Black English whose
> parents came
> from the Caribbean), much to his astonishment. The term African
American
> clearly means something in the states where you have an American
> people who
> came from Africa many years ago but the meaningless term
African-English
> has started to appear in our newspapers. We have second plus
generation
> Black English subjects, African-derived subjects (usually Nigerian)
and
> black Caribbean subjects (often Jamaican) and culturally they are
unlike
> each other.
>
> John

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