Americans (period)

Last week, I was blasted by referring to a certain group as "black."  As I explained to this person, who was supporting BLM, that is how my friends in that group prefer to be described. One friend points out, African-American doesn't apply: they've never even been to Africa, and have no connections there. They are American.

After processing this some, I came to the question of "What if I had to describe myself using the ethnic or region + American?" I'm German, Swedish, Irish, Native American (tribe unknown due to lack of records) and Scotch/Irish/Celt.  Usually, I describe myself as being a mutt. So what does that make me? A mutt-American? Do I list all of the countries? No, that's ridiculous.   If I were to stand in front of  you, would you go through all of those countries to put a label on me? Most likely, not. That's not what we do as a society. 

This brings us to: Why do they want to be referred to as African-Americans then?  To me, it sounds divisive.  If they don't want division, why don't they refer to themselves as Americans? 50 years ago, they were fighting to be included.  Now they want segregation.

What if we were to drop the labels? Not Democrats. Not Liberals. Not Conservatives. Not Republicans. No colors. No industry related labels. Working or not.  College-educated or not. We are all Americans. Reach out and shake hands instead of raising fists.  That is the only way we are going to start healing.