Wave wrote:If you call the tail of a sheep a leg, how many legs does a sheep have? Of course four. Just because you call it a leg doesn't make it a leg.
You people from the USA, you don't own the whole continent. Get over it.
Haha, thank you, I'm from the United States (Michigan, as my location will tell <--), but I made my comments almost certain that more people were privy to this argument...
as I wake completely up I realize it might not have been clear, and I made the assumption that those who read my post would do the appropriate critical thinking, so here's a breakdown: I'm not really passionate about the term "America," but was rather making a point regarding Albion's original statement regarding the term "African-American" not making sense to him because Africa is not a country.
There are two main points to take from this: the word "America," even though it doesn't necessarily indicate a citizen of the united states (I don't care if you don't agree--go with it for this part of the point), is used that way in just the same way "African-American" is used for people with darker skin who aren't even (recent, see Bryant-Inc's comment) descendants of Africa, but to indicate someone with darker skin.
The second part was that the type of reigion doesn't matter as long as it's a familiar geographical region -- I believe there was a study that showed that a significant amount of Americans (both senses, so interpret how you will) cannot name more than, I think it was 3 African countries. Indeed, when people try to categorize things, they will do it based on basic/obvious differences (I'd cite a textbook but I think most will just agree...). Color of the skin is obvious, physiological differences (if any) between random African countries is not something of which we naturally keep track. In other words, when you say "African-American", nobody's going to be like "what!?! I don't get it! so they are American and they came from Afirca--but which country in Africa?!?!?!" because it doesn't matter, because we don't make any associations that would imply it is important to know the exact country in order to know a certain fact about the person in question (unless, perhaps, Africa is part of your field of study -- which is obviously a different story).
I guess I also made another assumption, and this one perhaps stupidly with a geekier crowd, and that is that you would be familiar with the arguments about whether or not the term America should indicate citizens of the united states or not -- and in that respect, my comment was supposed to be somewhat anecdotal, but I guess that was all for naught.
Now this might be another topic, but I find myself particularly interested in the reply about "using wikipedia as proof" instead of some company-sponsored, published information? I never got the idea that using a source edited by one or several associated people (clear bias) is somehow better than a source edited by many (bias evened out) and those edits overlooked by those who have shown integrity with regard to keeping accurate information with as little bias as possible, not to mention the citations, and the ability to roll back edits.
I think his first words would be "Where the **** am I?!" 
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