Actually, I don't think this demonstrates anything at all about
political correctness. It does demonstrate that the interviewer is
dumb. What does being
black have to do with the feeling one gets after winning a track event anyway? Now, I don't much care for the terms
African-American or
Afro-American either, but only because they aren't at all accurate as most people want to use them.
I have a friend who is from Morocco. He is now an American. He is an African-American, but he is not black. I am from America myself, Misssissippi if you want to get more specific. I've never been to Africa. I cannot trace any relative to Africa. Sure, some of my anscestors are from Africa (this is conjecture, but I challenge anyone to disprove it :)), but a lot of anthropologists will tell you that we all have that in common. I do use the term African American under some circumstances, though. If it sounds better. That's why I wrote The origin of modern African American names instead of "The origin of black American names." Purely subjectively, I thought the former had a better cadence than the latter. Perhaps it was the assonance that helped as well.
An addendum: I think people who get worked up over this are people who hang around college campuses too much, or get most information about
black people from television. I have many black friends. I don't know a single one who refers to themselves or others as African American. So I strongly disagree that ". . . many blacks complain about the seperation of the races, and yet insist on calling themselves a name the completely removes them the general population." Some of the so called
black leaders go for this, because separatism, and racism solidifies their power base. So if it doesn't exist, it must be manufactured. But use of the term "African American", as far as I can tell, is not widespread among black people.
White people seem to go for it, though, to avoid ticking off the aforementioned
black leaders and whatever mindless sheep they can con into following them into another
quixotic struggle.