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NO, no one EVER says African British or African-French.
If you live here, you are just British.
If you entered your ethnicity on an official form, you would be Black British.
I don't get the whole 'African' thing unless you were actually born in Africa. Most so called 'African-Americans' were born in the US and their ancestors have been there for many generations. They probably have a considerably mixed ancestry, not just African.
Black people in Britain tend to either be of Caribbean descent, so of African descent by a roundabout route, or are immigrants from African countries. We have a lot of Nigerians, Somalis etc in the town where I live. Anyone who is second generation or more tends to have parents who came here from Jamaica etc after WWII.
I am assuming the reason we don't say African-British or African-French is because, without such a large black community who feel a need to reclaim their African ancestry after the history of slavery, this is not such an issue in Britain at least and Black people in this country are far more likely to identify with the Caribbean than with Africa. My boyfriend's best friend is a successful multi-millionaire businessman whose parents came here from Jamaica in the 1950s, but he is still proud enough to want a Jamaican passport. He feels no connection to Africa.
Black communities in Europe are usually based on old colonial ties. So the British black community tends to be Caribbean while a lot of black people in France are from the Cote D'Ivoire or other African colonies eg Algeria. It is possible that black French of direct African descent may therefore identify themselves as African-French but in the UK this is rare. It will probably become more common as the children of the current generation of settlers from African countries grows up, but currently our adult population of British-born black people is overwhelmingly Caribbean and proud of it.
LOL! Yes. My friend asked this question to me a few months back. You can be "African" or "Black" anything. I know people who are African-Italian or Black-Italian. Myself, I'm Black-Native American. But it can get a little too technical and "politically correct" if you really want to take it that far.
Mark Thompson, radio host, talks about African Ancestry Experience
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First question - of course.
Second question - Every African ____ is of African descent. Just like every Asian is from Asia. I am sure this is not a real question but I will humor you anyway. Due to evolution, all differences in races have been caused by place of origin. Asian eyes, black color/hair, Latino tan pigment, etc. So, the answer is yes. At one point, every black person can trace their roots back to Africa.
There's actually an interesting clip from those riots in france last year, i think they were, where the newsreader described "African American" youths doing something. Whoops.
I believe most of the rest of the world just says "black" when describing someone.
As for "are they really of African descent" -- Well, there's Aborigines, Moors, the people of the Caribbean... so, there are plenty of people who are "black" but might not be ancestrally from Africa. I suspect this is why AP uses "black" unless specifically requested otherwise.
INdeed there are. There are many people, born in France, or in England, whose ancestors came from Africa.
Yes, they are. You can tell many times by looking at them. However, if they are like me, and only 1/16th AFrican, you can't tell.
Now.. if a white south african moves to USA - are they called African American?
1. If a person is not from Africa, they are not African.
2. If a person is white, people call them anglo-saxon. Are you kidding me? Millions of white people come from other places. Most caucasian people have never even set foot on the British Islands, let alone are descended from those two specific tribes.
3. There are three continents in the Americas. Personally I'm from a state within the United States, North America. So which "America" are they from? Just like when certain people hear a person speaking Fasri or Arabic, they assume the person is an Arab....There are also Persians who speak these languages.
4. When people realize that ignorantly putting labels on races is stupid the world will be a better place.
5. There are scientific names for the races...none of which are "African-American".
African Americans have the right to make a Movie about themselves
to protect and demark how they want to be portrayed
especially amongst immigrants
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