100% of our species has African heritage, it's just a question of how many generations since we left the continent. Ghana is part of Africa but since he's not American, you'd have to want to call him African British or British African which sounds just as absurd to me.

Since there's no way to tell when someone came from Africa, it's racist to me simply because Charlize Theron is factually from Africa (literally born there) and is an American citizen so the label "African American" applies to her properly than Al Sharpton who was born in the US.

So it's clearly not tied to place of birth or race since Charlize Theron would be African American. It's not tied to citizenship since I haven't heard anyone in the US call Idris Elba British African either though I could be wrong.

I wasn't born in the US and I don't see why there has to be a distinction between calling people different names based on their heritage. To me, it makes yet another camp where people try to create "you are different than me". It's another form of them.

You don't face racism by inventing a term like African American. You face racism by facing racists and removing racist policies. That matters a lot more than labels to define a group as an other vs. calling the group your fellow American with no distinction from any other race or place of birth.