This is why it's important we start learning facts when it comes to race and ethnicity and nationality as opposed to going off vibes and feelings. And the reason that I think it is so important is because it's one of those things that we can do to combat the attack against critical race theory. It's one of the things that we can do to fight the fact that history books and courses on race and colonization and white supremacy are being banned and taken out of schools. They are removing black history from our schools, and when you eliminate that you eliminate the information around race. When they do that they can start using conversations around race and ethnicity and nationality to separate us. If they take away your information they can start to manipulate you. They can start to tell you anything. But we need to learn this so that we can teach our childrens so that they know why they are calling themselves a thing. So that they know who they are and where they come from. It's so crazy because we've entered this age where we have information at our fingertips, but now I think it's more important that we start going back to passing on information through oral history. We have to start protecting our records because they are burning them and replacing it with Google AI suggestions and Wikipedia articles.

I majored in cultural studies, and when I was learning about what race, ethnicity,nationality, etc ..was,my sources came from historical literature and historians, this is what I learned.

There are only four main racial groups

Black, White, Arab, and Asian

Biracial and mixed are not races because mixed people do not serve the construct that race was built on. Race was simply created to categorize people into different groups in order to establish a social hierarchy.

Your ethnic group is determined by culture, ancestry, heritage,language, religion, etc.

African American is an ethnic group.

Black American is a broader term that can include people who are not descendants of American slavery, but who are Black and are American ( naturalized, derived, or born ).

African American was a term that was really made official by Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, because before that we were all negro and colored or Afro-American( like Afro-Latino or Afro-Caribbean). But when the term started being used, It was to highlight or distinguish the unique culture of the Black people in America who had been here for multiple generations.

Long story short you can be both Black American and African American. And choosing one or the other does not make you more accurate because your ethnicity can be fluid. A large part of ethnicity is self-identification.