I dedicate this to my cousin's wife who criticized me for describing somebody's physical appearance as black, instead of African-American. I have been a staunch disbeliever in the process of hyphenating Americans. I believe that we are all Americans, and hyphenation only creates confusion and superfluousness under the guise of sensitivity. Hyphenation is best deserved to describe people that are actual immigrants to this country, and not people that are born here. Even then, it should be used to describe where they come from, not the color of their skin. Forty years ago, an Irish-American was somebody who had come over from Ireland. If you wanted to know what color they were, you had to look at them.

Here is a pretty good example of why people shouldn't be hyphenated. Denys Blell claims he has been discriminated against because he is not "black enough" as an 'African-American' to please the staff at Loyola College in Maryland. While Blell, of Afro-Lebanese origin is undoubtedly African American, I found it curious that most of the criticism centers around Loyola's alleged claim that Blell is not "black enough" for the job, rather than Loyola's blatantly bigoted hiring policy. Rather than attack the policy itself, the lawsuit seems to want to create a color chart to define where white ends and black begins. It seems as though Blell is saying "I am so black enough, and I do come from Africa."

Another good example is Kim du Toit. I added Kim to my blogroll because we seem to share the same views on firearms. He has good technical knowledge of the subject, and he provided me with a good excuse for stockpiling ammunition. (People used to look at me funny when they found out I had thousands of rounds of ammo on hand.) Kim describes himself as "a white African-American with a girl's first name and a French last name." Born and raised in South Africa, Kim lived in Chicago for a while. I can imagine his surprise when Chicago liberals told him he was not African-American.

My refusal to label people as African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native American-Americans, or whatever does not make me a bigot. Nor does the fact that I look at people as individuals, rather than try to lump them into groups make me insensitive or disrespectful. In fact, just the opposite is true. Perhaps if you stop trying to group people together by how they look, and look at them for who they really are, you'll understand.