Are African-Americans True Americans?

BPSCG

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Apparently not, at least not according to spacetrader.com, the online gift shop for NASA's Johnson Space Center.

GET HER NOW! WOMAN ASTRONAUT FIGURE

This 11.5" doll comes outfitted in an astronaut jumpsuit and includes functional space luggage. All packed in a pink backpack. Official decals of NASA logo and STS-107 crew patch adorn the luggage case. Also available in African-American.
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Click on the dropdown and your options are "American" and "African-American."

Don't you hate it when you try your darndest to be politically correct and you end up saying something utterly foolish?
 
Well, that didn't take long. The choices are now "Caucasian" and "African-American".

:)


It still doesn't sound quite right. I'm waiting for some subgenius to change it to "Caucasian-American" and "African-American".
 
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"Why are 50,000 people a second trying to access this one web page of ours?"
 
BPSCG said:
Apparently not, at least not according to spacetrader.com, the online gift shop for NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Click on the dropdown and your options are "American" and "African-American."

Don't you hate it when you try your darndest to be politically correct and you end up saying something utterly foolish?
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Hell, why didn't they just use the Mayor Ray Nagin convention, and offer them in Vanilla and Chocolate? Oh, wait, some tool would have ordered one and tried to eat the plastic.

Never mind.

DR
 
Yes, they changed it meanwhile.

The easiest way to avoid this would have been to display both dolls, and give each a first name. And in the drop-down box you simply choose between one of the two names.
 
wahrheit said:
Yes, they changed it meanwhile.

The easiest way to avoid this would have been to display both dolls, and give each a first name. And in the drop-down box you simply choose between one of the two names.
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Thurston Howell, III & Fred Sanford?
 
wahrheit said:
Yes, they changed it meanwhile.

The easiest way to avoid this would have been to display both dolls, and give each a first name. And in the drop-down box you simply choose between one of the two names.
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I don't think that would be such a good idea, either...
 
I've been watching the PBS documentary "The War." Ironically, given all the racist beliefs held during WWII -- during the Battle of the Bulge when Germans posed as Americans, African-American soldiers were a welcome site for American troops because they were the "truest Americans." There were no Black Axis troops.
 
Beerina said:
Well, that didn't take long. The choices are now "Caucasian" and "African-American".

:)


It still doesn't sound quite right. I'm waiting for some subgenius to change it to "Caucasian-American" and "African-American".
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I like people who insist on using "African-American" when the person in question is neither African nor American.
 
These gorgeous and voluptuous lady "astronaut" dolls apparently only come in eleven and a half inches high? Do they um... well do they have any that are um, like... five feet seven? Could somebody check and then send me a double-secret-NSA-proof public post right here in this thread? I'd check myself but I don't want to slam their site... (ain't I sumpin? Always thinkin' of the other guy...)
 
BPSCG said:
Don't you hate it when you try your darndest to be politically correct and you end up saying something utterly foolish?
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Actually trying your darndest to be politically correct means you end up saying something utterly foolish almost by definition.
 
I can understand why the expression colored has fallen out of favor. It really does have racist underpinnings. It implies that they were "normal" (i.e. white) until some agent (God?) colored them. I would not appreciate it if white people were referred to as "bleached" ... so I would never say "colored."

But what's wrong with "black"? That's how I was raised to speak, and I don't see anything offensive about it in the least. When I use the terms "black" and "white" I do so without the slightest racist bias. How can anybody get offended over such simple words?

And "African Americans" is not only a cumbersome phrase, but in some ways it flies against the notion of what America is really about. ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL!!! German, African, Irish, Chinese, we're all still Americans, and no American is "more American" than any other.
 
Unalienable said:
I can understand why the expression colored has fallen out of favor. It really does have racist underpinnings. It implies that they were "normal" (i.e. white) until some agent (God?) colored them. I would not appreciate it if white people were referred to as "bleached" ... so I would never say "colored."

But what's wrong with "black"? That's how I was raised to speak, and I don't see anything offensive about it in the least. When I use the terms "black" and "white" I do so without the slightest racist bias. How can anybody get offended over such simple words?

And "African Americans" is not only a cumbersome phrase, but in some ways it flies against the notion of what America is really about. ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL!!! German, African, Irish, Chinese, we're all still Americans, and no American is "more American" than any other.
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Actually, it's interesting what the social psychology vocab is.

Colored is for anyone who is non-white. African-American is for ethnicity. Black is for race. Most people just don't know the distinction between ethnicity and race.
 
I would suggest Americans of African origin.

But this would annoy any one with a science background as they know we all came from Africa and it would annoy the creationists who believe we all came from the Garden of Eden.

So maybe, Americans of More Recent African Origin (AOMRAfO).

Native Americans would become Americans of Not So Recent Asian Origin (AONSRAsO) to distinguish them from the AOMRAsO which would replace Asian-American.

There would also be many Americans of Multiple or Indeterminate Origin (AOMOIO).
 
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