Thanks for the info and comments; I will be reading the posts you referred me to.
As far as my references, I am indeed referring to Black Americans, it is simply that in the San Francisco area, my colleagues refer to themselves in public as African Americans, just as others use Hispanic, Latino, etc. No disrepect meant.
Yeah, I've never understood this really. What are you supposed to call a black person in europe or canada, African-european, african-canadian? What do you call a black person who is from europe or canada but immigrated to the US, African-european-american? It's insane, why would someone care if they were referred to as black? I don't care if I'm referred to as white, it's simply the color of my skin. I don't call myself european-american.
I think african american describes someone who has immigrated to the US from africa, independent of skin color. If a white person is born in africa and immigrates to the US, are they not african-american? I mean it sure as heck seems like it to me. I think some people just want to come up with a reason to get insulted and an excuse to get angry over nothing.
As a child I was used to saying "african-american" because my mom is incredibly liberal and wants everything to be super PC, so she always made me say that. Like if I made the mistake of saying "black person" she would say, "WEAK 9mm!! WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!?!?"
So, when I was 16 I was in Canada and I accidentally referred to someone as "african-american." A bunch of @#$%s (All of whom were white) immediately started talking trash to me. They were like, "this isn't the US and he isn't an american, so he's not an african-american you idiot!" I did make the point of saying that the US is not the only country in the americas and that I wasn't calling him african-united-statesian. I mentioned that this is apparently what you're "supposed to say" in the US. The incident did make me think about how odd it really is to require a black person to be called "african american" though.
Now, I think that it is probably very likely that persons of color would encounter more problems on average than a white person when OCing. This is not a good thing, but I really do believe it would probably be the case in many places. I think it happens with plenty of other things so there's no reason to think it wouldn't happen with OCing firearms too.