Thread by @Cajsa

Walter Mosley in 'An Awkward Series of Conversations,' a short story in "The Awkward Black Man."
“You called me African-American, and I don’t answer to that description. People who come from another country to this one use the hyphenate name.

You know, Italians who came over a generation or two back calling themselves Italian-Americans. Maybe they kept up contact with home or followed cultural norms that are particularly Italian.

But a man like me, a man whose ancestors were kidnapped, chained, and dragged over here centuries ago is not, cannot be, a hyphenate. At least not the kind of hyphenate that you say. You might call me an Abductee-American, an originally Unwilling-American.

You might say that I’m a partly Disenfranchised American. But African-American? I mean, even if my mama was from Guinea, you’d do better to call me a Guinean rather than an African-American. Africa is a continent, not a country, not even one race.

You don’t use the term White-American because that has no cultural basis; even saying Euro-Americans makes very little sense.”“We say African-American because that is the parlance,”Rahlina interjected. “Used to be the parlance was colored, Negro, Afro, nigger, coon, jigaboo.

Parlance don’t make a word right. And I refuse to be called after a continent that no one in my line remembers."

He sure can write. Abductee-American!