] A small group of Westside High School students plastered
] the school Monday with posters advocating that a white
] student from South Africa receive the "Distinguished
] African American Student Award" next year.

] The students' actions on Martin Luther King Jr. Day upset
] several students and have led administrators to
] discipline four students.
...
] The posters were removed by administrators because they
] were "inappropriate and insensitive," Westside
] spokeswoman Peggy Rupprecht said Tuesday.

Acidus comments:
WTF is this? It seems that Blacks professing they are "African American" is prefectly ok, but for a white guy to profess his nationality, it is "inappropriate and insensitive." What kind of bullshit double standard is that? If anything he is more African-American they any of these people: He was born in African, he lives in America. How many of these other students running for African-American Student of the year can say that?

I agree, this baffles me. To me, "African-American" does not mean only black, it means people whose ancestry is African.

Using myself as an example... Though I rarely use the title, I can claim to be Polish-American, or Croatian-American. The latter one is especially relevant because though two of my grandparents were born in Croatia, their own parents were born in Hungary. But I don't see that as negating the Croatian heritage. I grew up with Croatian culture around me -- dances, food, language, customs, and people who identified as Croatian. To say that I could not identify myself as of Croatian heritage because my ancestors hadn't been there for enough generations, or were of the wrong skin color, would be absurd.

You are not African-American, You are White