Racial hyphenation is condescending!

Is it just me, or does it bother anyone else when they see groups of people being described with hyphenations?

African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, etc.

I suppose such terms came about as a result of political correctness, although I don't see their benefit.

What was the point of using hyphenation? Was it an idea that the term "blacks" didn't provide them with an American identity?  Was it the idea that "African-American" is supposedly more patriotic? Perhaps that was the idea.

In reality, the term is very condescending and damaging. Here's why:

To call someone African-American implies that they aren't really an American.  If they were, why wouldn't you just call them an American?

And listen, I get the idea that some groups seem more American than others, based simply on how much their values are in accord with traditional American (primarily white) founded values.  And there is nothing wrong with saying groups tend to have different values.  To claim otherwise would be to claim that cultures are equal in every way.  But blacks have been in America a very long time.  They have a long tradition.

The idea of political correctness is typically a liberal idea.  And liberals typically claim to believe in things like treating people equally, ending discrimination etc.

Well, it would seem to me that one way to minimize discrimination would be to minimize, not promote, the differences between people!  And using hyphenated descriptions promotes differences between people.  That is not good.

When I think of the word "diversity", I think of the word "divide".  I argue that dividing a country is often not a good thing. After all, do people tend to choose as their friends and partners people who are similar to them, or dissimilar? Similar, I would think.

Blacks are already different from other groups based on their skin colour alone.  So if liberal political correctness was the cause of the hyphenation, why would they further separate blacks from others by calling them African-Americans? It seems bizarre, especially from a traditionally liberal standpoint.

And how about the fact that ethnic white groups are often not hyphenated? The relative infrequency of use of use terms such as English-American and German-American implies that whites do not need to be hyphenated because they are more American than the hyphenated groups are.

And the thing is, regardless of whether whites tend to espouse more traditionally American values than other groups do, why would it be a positive to promote such differences by using hyphenation?

And the choice of "African" as the hyphenated word is even more bizarre, since it refers to their ancestral heritage, further highlighting division between blacks and others!

It's just not right.