If Black Americans are regularly called African Americans, then shouldn’t White Americans be called European Americans ?
December 17, 2025
Both groups are descended from populations that left their respective continents centuries ago. So how does it make sense to hyphenate one group but not the other ？
42 comments
They often are, when such a distinction is merited. That, or something like “Americans of European descent”.
What do you mean “shouldn’t they”? They often are.
not everybody does. honestly African-American is starting to phase out.
They are, champ. It just doesn’t come up as much.
African Americans are called that generic term because they don’t know the nation of their origin due to being descendent from slaves. White Americans do not have that issue, so the refer to their specific national ancestry with things like “Italian American” and “Irish American” etc.
It seems they prefer ‘Italian Americans’ ; ‘Polish Americans’; ‘Irish Americans’ etc
white sums up euro in the US
African American refers to the new cultural identity created as a result of African slaves having their historic cultures ripped from them and lost.
Most Black Americans are African Americans but some are not.
I believe so, I mean there are Asian, African, Indian, Mexican Americans who may have or may have never left America before nor have ever been to their respective ancestral region, or speak the language. But nobody would deny that they’re “insert” American. I believe the same should be said for White Americans who happened to be of European descent.
Oooo I love hopping into threads before they get deleted by mods!
No, it would be just as meaningless.
A very large percentage of Americans with European ancestry know specifically where in Europe their ancestors come from and identify with those countries or people. So you have Italian Americans and Irish Americans, etc.
For a big, glaring reason, most Americans with African ancestry do not know specifically where those ancestors came from other than just “Africa.” This is a big part of why you wind up with the larger, more broad “African American” category used in place of the more granular ethnic categories that people whose ancestors came from other places tend to use.
Have you not heard of Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans, Greek-Americans, and others?
African-Americans, in general, have had fewer opportunities to know exactly where their ancestors came from, so they are less likely to identify with a particular African nation than with Africa as a whole.
A big reason that African Americans are treated as a whole more than Americans of European descent is that while most white Americans have a vague idea of their ancestry, for example Irish, Italian, German etc.
The ancestors of most black Americans had their culture forcibly stripped from them. They were often punished for speaking their native language or celebrating their culture, had their families and social groupings split up and mixed with other groups from West Africa, and usually had their first names changed and adopted the last name of the people who owned them.
They don’t know if their ancestors came from what is now Nigeria or Togo or Senegal, or Cameroon because that was taken from them.
European Americans are usually 1st-2nd generation immigrants from Europe. Whiteness is a more broad concept that envelopes all the Caucasian people in the country, so there is a distinction there.
African American is more specific than Black American. Not all black Americans are African American.
European-Americans tend to know which country on the continent they came from so they go by Irish-American, Italian-American, British-American, etc, when they want to be specific. African-Americans have no idea which country they came from due to the slave trade so they have to go by the continent and just say African-American.
Caucasian Americans was a possible term but didn’t last.
See, the difference is that one group knows where they came from because they left by choice and can trace their lineage, and the other group was taken by force.
Most black people I know identify as black, not “African American”. That had its heyday in the 90s.
In general you should just call people by what they prefer to be called by, it’s really as simple as that. Do you know someone that wants to be called or self identified as “European-American”?
It’s extremely common for white people to call themselves by their European ancestry, yes. To the point that it’s a common thing that actual Europeans make fun of us for.
Maybe, but not really.
Most Americans cite their origins as Country-Americans.
Slave-descended Americans don’t have that luxury. Their heritage was stolen, and the appellation African-American was invented to both honor them and bring visibility to their plight.
Race is a social construct and whiteness in particular is BS term that white people made up so that they can feel pure and superior to other races
They call themselves white because they just like being white and feeling superior
Just vastly different circumstances of arrival and history. The Atlantic slave trade was a hell of a thing.
African American is an ethnic group, while Black American is a racial & national designation (Black Americans include African Americans, who make up 92% of the Black American population, Black Caribbean Americans, Afro Latino/Hispanic Americans, & the various Americans recently immigrated from Africa).
It was a term created by White colonist & early Americans to distinguish between descendants of American born primarily African descendent slaves & newly transported slaves from Africa & elsewhere.
It was repopularized in the 1980s to act as an ethnic title for the descendants of enslaved Africans in the US.
European Americans have their own ethnic names. However, the term European American is sometimes used when speaking about multiple groups of Americans of primarily European descent.
Sometimes they are
I dont think anybody says African-American anymore
When it’s appropriate, they are called European American. It’s something that has just happen relatively recently, but I’ve noticed it. If African American refers to the descendants of myriad peoples from that continent who have mixed and had a certain shared cultural history, European American makes a similar counterpart.
It’s hard to come up with population descriptors that make sense and are unambiguous. There’s also a lot of political connotations you have to wade through. I’ve seen the far right try to make “Heritage Americans” a thing, and I hate it. I’m of old settler English stock myself, and it’s really cringy.
You should watch [this](https://youtu.be/CRIaxjZxyJg?si=Xviadvz_HYkioaaa) from PBS. It explains the differences between the cultural identities, and why people identify as Black or African-American, as well as how African immigrants fit into the various communities. It’s important to note that Black people are not a monolith and identity is deeply personal.
As for the European-American part of your question, most of us white people know the specific country/countries of our ancestors, something not always available to Black Americans. We tend to use things like Italian-American, Irish-American, etc (to the chagrin of people living in those countries).
White Americans don’t really identify as European ( I’m not sure how much Europeans do). They’re more specific. Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, etc. Often they dislike one another, very tribal. Much more so than black Americans.
African American is a rather dated expression.
African-American was coined the time European diasporas were starting to form political affiliation and Identity. Like Italian-American or Irish-American.
African American was campaigned as a term for Americans that have ancestors in the country that goes back to slavery. African Americans do not know their country of origin. So Africans that came over via the slave trade lost cultural roots. They then formed a unique culture within the United States due to slavery and segregation. A recent immigrant from Uganda, that did not come over due to slavery, is not African American. They would be Ugandan American. African-American was pushed as a politically correct term for black people, though it technically doesn’t apply to recent immigrants.
In the same vein European American doesn’t make sense. An identity of Irish-American for example, is heritage from an Irish person that immigrated between 1830 – 1930. The culture that grew-up around that diaspora community is Irish American. A recent Irish person that gained American citizenship, would not be considered Irish American to an Irish-American PAC for example.
Ethnicity and race are not the same thing in the US. A Ugandan immigrant with black skin would be considered black, but not African-American.
Whiteness is about race, class, and religion. At one point Irish and Italian immigrants and their children were not considered white.
To reiterate, African American also has the continent name and not the country of origin because Africans Americans do not know their country of origin. Similarly, Asian American specifies Sino Asian people, it doesn’t include people from the Middles East or India.
European American would be a more linear comparison.
Black American = White American
African American = European American
Egyptian American = German American
Most of the time I’ve noticed when someone gives their home country instead of color or continent they are Asian, or Hawaiian.
So, the thing is that a ton of European Americans *do* use this kind of terminology. It’s just that they get more specific: Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American, Polish-American… Generally white people in the US have enough idea of their lineage to trace it back to a specific nation. There’s not really a unified “European culture,” and the different ways “European-Americans” arrived in the US tend to vary widely. The shared cultural identity is usually national, not continental.
On the other hand, there was a certain event that led the vast majority of African-Americans to lose track of their lineage sometime from the 1600s-1800s, right around when their ancestors were stripped of their identities and forcibly removed from their homelands. As such, a lot of people can’t say with any certainty whether they’re Ghanaian-American, Ugandan-American, Nigerian-American, etc. And also, a new identity has formed around the shared experience of being disconnected from one’s ancestral culture.
Nah cause it was about making the country look white. You can look at the “Porto Rican” census and see this in the early 20th century and them doing calculations to track the population growth of the white people and the decline of mulattos and black people. You can look at Residential school documents and see the same. It was pretty much from the puritan agenda, which was to make a white Protestant country, then evolved to white nationalism as the country became more secular.
A large percentage of Black Americans descended from slaves and often lack direct knowledge of specific ancestry due to the slavery induced cultural genocide that occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Most Euro-Americans do know what country their ancestors came from and often have deep ties to their ancestors ancestral homeland, sometimes referring to themselves as Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans, for example. Those two groups have especially strong identities, in part, because they were so actively discriminated against in the early generations in the USA.
Many other European Americans just flat identify as Americans because their ancestors are the ones who colonized and founded what would become the USA.
I use the term “black folk”
As of the last census the city I live in is 42% black and the majority of the people I’ve hung out with describe themselves as black rather than African American. The exceptions to this have been older (think Gen X) and working in professional careers.
The term “African-American” was popularized and promoted in the 1980s by Jessie Jackson (black civil rights leader). He offered it as a more politically correct alternative to “black”. It was not imposed on them by white Americans which I think is important to note.
I’m no smart person but like some others have pointed out they don’t know which country their ancestors originated from since they came as slaves whereas most white people can say “of Irish descent” etc.
I also believe it’s because of racism. African American is the official term for black people and Caucasian is the official term for white people. African American is used more often than Caucasian relatively because of the heavy stigma of racism. Also Caucasian is derived from the Caucasus region in Eurasia but after a short Google search it has very racist origin sooo 🤷
The answer isn’t to start calling white people European-Americans. It’s to start calling black people Black, which seems to be what they would prefer.
That would be better than calling us Caucasian. Do I look Armenian to you?????
42 comments
They often are, when such a distinction is merited. That, or something like “Americans of European descent”.
What do you mean “shouldn’t they”? They often are.
not everybody does. honestly African-American is starting to phase out.
They are, champ. It just doesn’t come up as much.
African Americans are called that generic term because they don’t know the nation of their origin due to being descendent from slaves. White Americans do not have that issue, so the refer to their specific national ancestry with things like “Italian American” and “Irish American” etc.
It seems they prefer ‘Italian Americans’ ; ‘Polish Americans’; ‘Irish Americans’ etc
white sums up euro in the US
African American refers to the new cultural identity created as a result of African slaves having their historic cultures ripped from them and lost.
Most Black Americans are African Americans but some are not.
I believe so, I mean there are Asian, African, Indian, Mexican Americans who may have or may have never left America before nor have ever been to their respective ancestral region, or speak the language. But nobody would deny that they’re “insert” American. I believe the same should be said for White Americans who happened to be of European descent.
Oooo I love hopping into threads before they get deleted by mods!
No, it would be just as meaningless.
A very large percentage of Americans with European ancestry know specifically where in Europe their ancestors come from and identify with those countries or people. So you have Italian Americans and Irish Americans, etc.
For a big, glaring reason, most Americans with African ancestry do not know specifically where those ancestors came from other than just “Africa.” This is a big part of why you wind up with the larger, more broad “African American” category used in place of the more granular ethnic categories that people whose ancestors came from other places tend to use.
Have you not heard of Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans, Greek-Americans, and others?
African-Americans, in general, have had fewer opportunities to know exactly where their ancestors came from, so they are less likely to identify with a particular African nation than with Africa as a whole.
A big reason that African Americans are treated as a whole more than Americans of European descent is that while most white Americans have a vague idea of their ancestry, for example Irish, Italian, German etc.
The ancestors of most black Americans had their culture forcibly stripped from them. They were often punished for speaking their native language or celebrating their culture, had their families and social groupings split up and mixed with other groups from West Africa, and usually had their first names changed and adopted the last name of the people who owned them.
They don’t know if their ancestors came from what is now Nigeria or Togo or Senegal, or Cameroon because that was taken from them.
European Americans are usually 1st-2nd generation immigrants from Europe. Whiteness is a more broad concept that envelopes all the Caucasian people in the country, so there is a distinction there.
African American is more specific than Black American. Not all black Americans are African American.
European-Americans tend to know which country on the continent they came from so they go by Irish-American, Italian-American, British-American, etc, when they want to be specific. African-Americans have no idea which country they came from due to the slave trade so they have to go by the continent and just say African-American.
Caucasian Americans was a possible term but didn’t last.
See, the difference is that one group knows where they came from because they left by choice and can trace their lineage, and the other group was taken by force.
Most black people I know identify as black, not “African American”. That had its heyday in the 90s.
In general you should just call people by what they prefer to be called by, it’s really as simple as that. Do you know someone that wants to be called or self identified as “European-American”?
It’s extremely common for white people to call themselves by their European ancestry, yes. To the point that it’s a common thing that actual Europeans make fun of us for.
Maybe, but not really.
Most Americans cite their origins as Country-Americans.
Slave-descended Americans don’t have that luxury. Their heritage was stolen, and the appellation African-American was invented to both honor them and bring visibility to their plight.
Race is a social construct and whiteness in particular is BS term that white people made up so that they can feel pure and superior to other races
They call themselves white because they just like being white and feeling superior
Just vastly different circumstances of arrival and history. The Atlantic slave trade was a hell of a thing.
African American is an ethnic group, while Black American is a racial & national designation (Black Americans include African Americans, who make up 92% of the Black American population, Black Caribbean Americans, Afro Latino/Hispanic Americans, & the various Americans recently immigrated from Africa).
It was a term created by White colonist & early Americans to distinguish between descendants of American born primarily African descendent slaves & newly transported slaves from Africa & elsewhere.
It was repopularized in the 1980s to act as an ethnic title for the descendants of enslaved Africans in the US.
European Americans have their own ethnic names. However, the term European American is sometimes used when speaking about multiple groups of Americans of primarily European descent.
Sometimes they are
I dont think anybody says African-American anymore
When it’s appropriate, they are called European American. It’s something that has just happen relatively recently, but I’ve noticed it. If African American refers to the descendants of myriad peoples from that continent who have mixed and had a certain shared cultural history, European American makes a similar counterpart.
It’s hard to come up with population descriptors that make sense and are unambiguous. There’s also a lot of political connotations you have to wade through. I’ve seen the far right try to make “Heritage Americans” a thing, and I hate it. I’m of old settler English stock myself, and it’s really cringy.
You should watch [this](https://youtu.be/CRIaxjZxyJg?si=Xviadvz_HYkioaaa) from PBS. It explains the differences between the cultural identities, and why people identify as Black or African-American, as well as how African immigrants fit into the various communities. It’s important to note that Black people are not a monolith and identity is deeply personal.
As for the European-American part of your question, most of us white people know the specific country/countries of our ancestors, something not always available to Black Americans. We tend to use things like Italian-American, Irish-American, etc (to the chagrin of people living in those countries).
White Americans don’t really identify as European ( I’m not sure how much Europeans do). They’re more specific. Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, etc. Often they dislike one another, very tribal. Much more so than black Americans.
African American is a rather dated expression.
African-American was coined the time European diasporas were starting to form political affiliation and Identity. Like Italian-American or Irish-American.
African American was campaigned as a term for Americans that have ancestors in the country that goes back to slavery. African Americans do not know their country of origin. So Africans that came over via the slave trade lost cultural roots. They then formed a unique culture within the United States due to slavery and segregation. A recent immigrant from Uganda, that did not come over due to slavery, is not African American. They would be Ugandan American. African-American was pushed as a politically correct term for black people, though it technically doesn’t apply to recent immigrants.
In the same vein European American doesn’t make sense. An identity of Irish-American for example, is heritage from an Irish person that immigrated between 1830 – 1930. The culture that grew-up around that diaspora community is Irish American. A recent Irish person that gained American citizenship, would not be considered Irish American to an Irish-American PAC for example.
Ethnicity and race are not the same thing in the US. A Ugandan immigrant with black skin would be considered black, but not African-American.
Whiteness is about race, class, and religion. At one point Irish and Italian immigrants and their children were not considered white.
To reiterate, African American also has the continent name and not the country of origin because Africans Americans do not know their country of origin. Similarly, Asian American specifies Sino Asian people, it doesn’t include people from the Middles East or India.
European American would be a more linear comparison.
Black American = White American
African American = European American
Egyptian American = German American
Most of the time I’ve noticed when someone gives their home country instead of color or continent they are Asian, or Hawaiian.
So, the thing is that a ton of European Americans *do* use this kind of terminology. It’s just that they get more specific: Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American, Polish-American… Generally white people in the US have enough idea of their lineage to trace it back to a specific nation. There’s not really a unified “European culture,” and the different ways “European-Americans” arrived in the US tend to vary widely. The shared cultural identity is usually national, not continental.
On the other hand, there was a certain event that led the vast majority of African-Americans to lose track of their lineage sometime from the 1600s-1800s, right around when their ancestors were stripped of their identities and forcibly removed from their homelands. As such, a lot of people can’t say with any certainty whether they’re Ghanaian-American, Ugandan-American, Nigerian-American, etc. And also, a new identity has formed around the shared experience of being disconnected from one’s ancestral culture.
Nah cause it was about making the country look white. You can look at the “Porto Rican” census and see this in the early 20th century and them doing calculations to track the population growth of the white people and the decline of mulattos and black people. You can look at Residential school documents and see the same. It was pretty much from the puritan agenda, which was to make a white Protestant country, then evolved to white nationalism as the country became more secular.
A large percentage of Black Americans descended from slaves and often lack direct knowledge of specific ancestry due to the slavery induced cultural genocide that occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Most Euro-Americans do know what country their ancestors came from and often have deep ties to their ancestors ancestral homeland, sometimes referring to themselves as Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans, for example. Those two groups have especially strong identities, in part, because they were so actively discriminated against in the early generations in the USA.
Many other European Americans just flat identify as Americans because their ancestors are the ones who colonized and founded what would become the USA.
I use the term “black folk”
As of the last census the city I live in is 42% black and the majority of the people I’ve hung out with describe themselves as black rather than African American. The exceptions to this have been older (think Gen X) and working in professional careers.
The term “African-American” was popularized and promoted in the 1980s by Jessie Jackson (black civil rights leader). He offered it as a more politically correct alternative to “black”. It was not imposed on them by white Americans which I think is important to note.
https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/the-origin-of-the-term–african-american–431844419894
I’m no smart person but like some others have pointed out they don’t know which country their ancestors originated from since they came as slaves whereas most white people can say “of Irish descent” etc.
I also believe it’s because of racism. African American is the official term for black people and Caucasian is the official term for white people. African American is used more often than Caucasian relatively because of the heavy stigma of racism. Also Caucasian is derived from the Caucasus region in Eurasia but after a short Google search it has very racist origin sooo 🤷
The answer isn’t to start calling white people European-Americans. It’s to start calling black people Black, which seems to be what they would prefer.
That would be better than calling us Caucasian. Do I look Armenian to you?????