Since this is an international community I figured this was a great place to ask.

In the U.S., we hear the word African American in news media. Does this exist anywhere else? I.e. African Canadian, African European, African Englishman, etc...

Not in Ireland, we would just call the person American with no colour reference.

Nope. As far as I know, we say black for people who look kinda black, and white for people who look kinda white. We don't link this to other countries.

Actually, strangely enough, in french, people tend to be more at ease with the word "black" (the english word for "black") than the word "noir" (the french word for "black"). To say that a black guy was driving the truck, most french people nowadays would say "un black conduisait le camion" instead of "un noir conduisait le camion". And would say "un blanc" it it's a white guy. That's a bit silly. Some associations have made videos to inform white people that black people are not particularly offended by the word "noir"...

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger_(dog)]Nigger?[/url]

Joke hence link

Term I hear most often and have used myself is Afro Caribbean.

Not in France either. "Nègre" and "Négresse" for "Nigger" word exist and are also often seen offensive, though.

Interesting topic.
And what about "Seasonal Greetings" instead of usual "Marry Christmas"?

No, not in Germany. For referring to the appearance the words African, black or coloured are used and sometimes Neger. The latter is often considered offensive and racist, but other groups argue that this is exaggerated political correctness, as the word rather states a difference just like black or coloured. It's an older term and older things are often considered racist in Germany and under the strong influence of US American media and their handling with the word Nigger, Neger became more and more objectionable in the 90s. That lead to some kind of self-fulfilling-prophecy, so that today the word is indeed more and more used as a racist taunt.

Yeah, i could give an example, but i could come out as racist....Funny thing that the very concerned population doesn't call themselves with the politically correct name...

My experience with this (which is admittedly limited) is that at least in this part of Canada you could probably use "African-American" (referring to the continent rather than the country), "Black", or "African-Canadian", and none would be seen as inherently controversial, although most people would probably just say "Black" unless there's a reason to do otherwise. (For example, regardless of someone having black skin, "African-Canadian" would imply that the person or their family are relatively recent immigrants from the continent of Africa, and wouldn't be used to describe someone who immigrated from the Caribbean.)

Your tone and intent probably matters more than which of those terms you use, though.



As for something like "Seasons Greetings" vs "Happy Holidays" vs "Merry Christmas" - only someone who is looking for an excuse to be offended is going to care about that. ;)

In Spain the funny stuff with the language came, not from racism, but from feminism. A few years ago the government drove some efforts to remove sexism from any area, which is a nice thing if there's really some kind of discrimination, but they went a little further and started to see discrimination everywhere. Basically they began to make up words to reduce some apparent sexism in the language, you could see some ministers saying things like "miembros y miembras" instead of just "miembros", which would be like saying "members and membernesses" instead of "members" (neither miembras nor membernesses are real words, and both miembros and members are or can be gender neutral).

Being a US citizen who's gotten to spend time in Europe, I can say that the word "black" to describe a black person is not really frowned upon over there. Also, when I spent some time in the UK, British black people spoke much more similar to British white people than what you typically found in the US prior to Obama becoming the first official mixed-race President.

strange thing.we seem to do same thing
here (unless I'm completly blind and dumb)

And it shouldn't exist in the US either. There's a very, very big difference between somebody that's actually from Africa and somebody whose family was from Africa several centuries ago. There's a reason why the civil rights movement settled on black rather than African American back in the earlier days.

Those three words are offensive afaik. The 'nigger' thing is tolerated as a joke/familiarity between two black people in my understanding. Please correct me if I'm wrong, anyone.

In france we say 'from african origin' (the word 'ascent' is not commonly used). We also say 'indians from america'