Letters to the Editor
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This Again?
Dickerson does not fess up to the insufficiency of "black" as a term for descendants of West Indian slaves brought to America, or African Americans as any American who descended from an African or emigrated from Africa.
After all, what do you call an American who moved from the Caribbean or a person with dark skin who moved from France? Neither black nor African American, by her rules.
In the academic setting, studying these issues, we have reach something close to consensus that "black" is a nearly sufficient term for a person with dark skin. Of course this is insufficient itself, in that "black" people range from Wesley Snipes' complexion to that one grandpa from The Cosby Show (or all those characters in the passing novels from the early 20th century).
And to fuddle it up even further, biologists say there is much more genetic variation within a single "race" (itself a purely sociological construct without scientific basis) than between two races.
Therefore, we need new, completely arbitrary, utterly ridiculous, wholly inoffensive categorical names to call each other based on appearance. Honkies can be DRAGONSLAYERS; darkies can be WOLFSBANE; asians can be THE ILLUSTRIOUS ONES, and anyone else can just make up a name as long as it's cool and appears somewhere in Dungeons & Dragons literature.