Bearing in mind I’m the whitest of whites, by my understanding the attitude is starting to shift toward calling black Americans black, for several reasons.

First off, not all black people are from Africa, and not all Africans are black.

Of those who are both, and who reside in America, what I understand is that many feel that the term African-American is simply a reminder of where many of them were stolen from - and it is true that they were stolen from their homes. We did that to them. Who are we (the masses) to continue to call them African-American when we (the whites) expressly took everything - or tried to, at least - that is Africa away from them?

And besides, nobody calls me Irish-American. They just call me white. Because that’s what I am. Am I also Irish? Sure. But I don’t really identify with being Irish or with being white. I identify with being American. And I think to intentionally deny someone the ability to self-associate with being an American first, just because of the color of the skin, just perpetuates the separation of black folks from the common American culture - as though they are still foreign, when they’ve been here just as long as we have.

So I actually don’t know many people outside of the most pretentious liberal arts settings (and lord knows I’ve been there) who still call black folks African-Americans. In fact, the only people I know of personally who insist on calling black folks African-Americans, are largely white Europeans. Like, born in Europe, accent and all. They think because they came here and got educated, that they know. But they don’t know shit. They know what the people in control of the direction of information want them to know.