I don't really understand the term 'African-American' (and others like it)

So... perhaps I'll get a bit of flak for this. I don't really know.

But I was reading another journal about racism etc and this thought struck me.

I don't actually understand the term African-American. Or Asian-American or... well, you get were I'm going.

Perhaps it's because I'm not actually American. In fact, I've never stepped foot inside the US so maybe I'm missing something.

I get that racial issues in the US are vastly different to what they are in Australia, where racist issues consist of people complaining about Aboriginal people, or making Asian tourist jokes. The latter is fairly harmless, the former is a different topic for another day. But basically, I realise that racism isn't the same here as it is there.

But... I don't really know how to term this properly, but there are 'black' people everywhere, you know? Like, in Australia they're not called African-Australian's in the UK they're not called African-English. And realise those last two sentences could potentially sound horrendous, but I don't mean it that way, I'm just trying to explain what I'm talking about.

Perhaps some of you guys could enlighten me, because it does confuse me a bit. I mean, why aren't they just American? Why is African, or Asian, or whatever slapped on there as well? I mean, it's fairly obvious anyway what cultural background people have (especially if it's fairly distinct). I know plenty of people from different cultural backgrounds and they're not *whatever*-Australian. They're just Australian...

Anyway... that's my haphazard all over the place rant... it's not really a rant but anyway.

If I come off as an ignorant racist I'm sorry, it's just something that had actually always baffled me, purely because I don't understand it and that's probably because I'm not American, I don't know.