Interesting discussion on Twitter yesterday...

Yesterday on Twitter, Toure' asked the Black/African-American tweeps what term they preferred. I responded that I can't limit a response to that to 140 characters [even if I were to number them part 1 of ?]. Harry Allen also participated in the conversation...he retweeted something someone said about "Black" people being Brown. I think this could be a blog topic all on its own. Don't Hispanic and East Indian people call themselves/get classified as Brown? Ownership of the right to call oneself something, those debates are always sticky. I'm not somebody that thrives on conflict. I'm more of the live and let live philosophy, which is why most of the time I don't do posts like this unless something's really sticking in my mind. I don't think these type of issues are unique to this country either...India and Brazil deal with similar issues. Again to go into all the history would be a really, long, blog post, but look it up. If you're at all interested in history, it's really fascinating, informative, [and depending on how you look at it somewhat depressing] stuff. As far as being called Black goes, it's easier to say and easier to fit in the spaces they give you on applications. As far as African-American goes...I don't mind that either, but I don't know where in Africa I'm from (I wish I had the money and time to invest in research.) ...I know almost all of my ethnic background but two parts...(Where I get my freckles from and what part of Africa my ancestors were from.). I do know that I had a Chinese maternal [great?] great-grandmother and that I had a Chickahominy maternal great grandmother. Now, if someone were to take the PC thing to the extreme, how many hyphens would that be? :) That's why I always thought the term "biracial" fell short, because I can't name one human being that's on the planet now that's solely of two races, unless they're extremely isolated, and even then I think it's debatable...No doubt about it, I definitely couldn't have tweeted all this. Twitter is an interesting platform, but I don't think it's ideal for all discussions. Again, we learn as we go...