BTW, my post previous to this one defined "American" as a person who is from the United States, which I believe is the most common definition of "American".

IMO, groups of people who are generally described as hypenated races and/or ethnic groups in the United States [such as African Americans", "Native Americans", and "Latinos"] would probably accept 99% of what that iink defined as describing what an American knows believes, and expects. After all, in my opinion, African Americans, Native Americans; and "Latino-Americans are just as much American as Anglo-Americans {European-Americans}.

I believe that is a matter of course for most Americans to understand that there are different nationalities in Europe and that those different nationalities have different languages, musical styles, dress, customs, traditional celebrations, etc. It is also a matter of course for most Americans to accept that these indices are, to a lesser or greater degree, remembered & celebrated by Americans who descend from those nations {and sometimes by Americans who don't descend from those nations such as occurs to a limited degree with the wearing of clothes that are the color green on the Irish-American celebration of "Saint Patrick's Day"}.

Hopefully more Anglo-Americans 'get' that along with the "standard" [mainstream] American culture there are cultural "sub-groups" among Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos-each having their own languages.

And hopefully, more Americans will realize that there are multiple "sub-groups" among African Americans. I'm not just talking region, gender, economic class, religion, sexual orientation, or cultural interests since every population group in the United States can be subdivided by those demographics.

I'm referring to the fact that there are significant sub-groups of African Americans who identify themselves {and may be identified by others} by a nation other than the United States where they or one or more of their parents or grandparents were born.

I'm not referring here to African Americans who are first generation racially mixed such as Tiger Woods or Barak Obama-though I'm certain that they must have experienced some cultural overlays from their White birth mothers and [on Barak Obama's part-perhaps also from his Kenyan birth father].

The point that I'm trying to make is that a significant number of   African Americans were born not in the United States but in Haiti, or Guyana, or Jamaica, or Trinidad, or Nigeria, or Ghana, or Kenya, or The Gambia, or Ethiopia, or Somalia-to name the places of birth of some African Americans who I personally know. As a result of their nation of origin, these people's culture will differ in greater or lesser degrees from other Americans and other African-Americans.

Furthermore, there are a significant number of African Americans who have two Black birth parent but one or both of these birth parents or birth grandparents were not born in the United States {see my list above of those African Americans who I know}.

Of course all this depends on how you define "African American".
But I believe that without question African Americans are far more diverse than most people, particularly most Anglo-Americans think.

And, btw, I strongly feel that it is a good thing that African Americans are made up of diverse, multicultural people.

I also strongly feel that it is a good thing that the United States and many other nations in the world are multicultural.

In time, I believe that Mudcat will have more people of color as regular posters. And I strongly believe that will also be a good thing.



Azizi