]] 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.
]
]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?

more than anything, this exposes the problem with the term "african american". In a literal, semantic sense, this kid was probably the only truly african person in the school, but lets be honest, that's not what they meant. the award was designed to recognise a black student in honor of MLK's efforts for civil rights. it has nothing to do with africa, and this kid, or his family, should've recognized that. This boys campain may have been innocent, but it wasn't very smart. Somehow a stigma got attached to the term "black", which i understand, and am sensitive to, but "african-american" has it's own set of problems, as this case proves.

Anyway, i'm not sure suspensions were necessary, but I certainly don't think would make sense for this kid to win an honor that was really not designed for him, and only made sense because someone didn't completely think out the consequences of a particular P.C. term. People love to smugly exploit semantic inconsistencies and loopholes like this, but it's not gonna work very often. At best, it'll spur debate about how to refine the definitions we use.

You are not African-American, You are White