Black or African-American?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

My skin is "white" because my ancestors were white. I am not German because they were German. Ethnicity, race, and nationality are not passed through DNA.

No, but who you were raised by tends to matter. I doubt it's coincidence that both I and my sister ended up with spouses whose families are from Chicago (our family is from Chicago), even though neither she nor I were raised there or had even visited there. As a matter of fact, of the 4 of us (myself, my wife, my sister, and her husband), only my brother in law was actually raised in Chicago. But there is no doubt that part of the reason we we all get along so well is a certain amount of commonality based on the Chicago connection. It's a cultural thing.

That's why I still, and likely will always, identify as "eastern European Jew", even though I've never been to Eastern Europe and I'm 3 generations removed from anyone who lived in Europe and am closer to agnostic than a practicing Jew. Because I know that when I meet someone else connected to an eastern European ancestor, there is a high likelihood that we will share a certain commonality of culture.

Culture, race, ethnicity, and nationality are imprecise, overlapping, and routinely misused. But they are also quite interleaved. It's true that in the end, culture is the main thread that binds any people together. It just happens that the other "traits" are often a convenient shorthand, imprecise as they may be.