Friend Azizi has embraced the "African-American" culture of the US and its African roots, as is her right, even though her own heritage is mixed - in fact, based on absolutely no data whatever, I'd guess that there is nobody out there who is "pure" anything. She says that, "'African American' is a cultural referent", and [IMNSHO] so are all of the other hyphen identities.

SharonA suggests (hopefully in jest) that we return to the geographically-based racial pointers of yesteryear and call a person of the "white" [bah!] "race" [bah!] a Caucasian-American. From Wiki: "The Caucasus comprises Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), Armenia, Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh) and part of Southern Russia (Chechnya)." So, in keeping with the rest of the hyphen identities, wouldn't a Caucasian-American be a person who has one parent from that part of the world or who identifies with that culture? Bah!

If my great-great-howevermany-great grandmother who came North from Georgia in 1867 and married into the Brooks family of western New York was, as I mildly suspect, a very light-complected former slave who could "pass" there, does that make me an African-American, even though I have no connection to that culture? Double-bah! My wife is as proud of, and interested in, her Russian-Jewish heritage [50%] as she is in her English roots [also 50%].

Cultural referent is exactly right, and none of these things should ever be considered to be anything else. I should be able to dislike the urban-street-rap culture without being accused of disliking "black" people, and I should be equally able to like General Powell, Senator Obama and Mr. Poitier (and respect but dislike Secretary Rice) without these people somehow being transmutted into "whites".