The term African-American is just out-and-out silly. I've seen American media refer to a black British model who worked in France as 'African-American' - despite her being neither African nor American. Born in England, but labelled American because of her skin. Isn't that an own-goal?

Heh heh. Who was it that referred to people in Chad as "African American Africans"? Some politician.

And who is more African American that someone like Teresa Heinz Kerry, who was born in Mozambique and is a naturalized citizen?

Yeah, it's a stupid term.

I hear it is a particular problem for jamaican people as well, with their shall we say, complex relationship to african identity.

I disagree. Arabs are considered Caucasian in some parts.

An anecdote: Egyptian friend studies abroad in the US, gets arrested visiting New York state for very overdue parking tickets he was unaware of (studying elsewhere in the US). They bring him to the station, and the cops attempt to fill in the paperwork, and they admit to my friend they are not sure what to fill in. In the end, they look in their procedure book, and said he is Arab and that is considered a subset of Caucasian in their definition. I was actually surprised by this.

Whether Arabs are caucasian or not is not GP's point: it's that someone who was born in Africa, and lives in America, can fairly consider themselves to be African-American, just on that basis.

For most of these cases, skin color is the lowest common denominator that allows them to game the system.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-...

We do live in America, so your actual ethnicity matters, but not as much as what people think you are on first glance (i.e. police, interviewers, etc).

Race is something that affects people's lives in the real world, beyond boxes on applications. This argument is becoming a little academic.