But I think the difference is, that society hasn't deemed it PC, and proper to call me an Irish-American.
Its my understanding that blacks where not the first to put their country of origin in front of the country where they now live (i.e. Japanese Americans) nor have I ever heard of that practice not being PC.
I think that may be what Slim is getting at. He doesn't call himself African American, instead it is white people who call him that.
Quite honestly many whites don't know what to call black people without a black person somewhere getting offended with any of the names currently used.
However, it wasn't whites that came up with the label "African-American", it came out of the black community.
Whites used the name "negro" up until early 1970 when the name fell out of favor with blacks which coincided with the Black Power movement where the slogan "Black is beautiful" came out of.
There was was also a many blacks to preferred "Afro-American", Afro referring to the continent of Africa. Malcolm X was one of the first to use this term.
Finally in the 1980s there was a census from the black community of using the term "African-American" to match that of other ethnic groups in America were calling themselves.
For many, African American is more than a name expressive of cultural and historical roots. The term expresses African pride and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the African diasporaan embracing of the notion of pan-Africanism earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.
I assume he doesn't like being called something that he doesn't consider himself to be. While I am proud of my Irish heritage, I, like Slim, am an American first and foremost. Don't call me Irish-American. American-Irish might work though...
