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The 2010 Census form had one option for "black, African American or Negro."

What do you say: “black” or “African American?” As someone who regularly writes about race and demographics, I often find myself using both terms interchangeably. But there is no clear on consensus on which term is most accurate or preferred, as Associated Press reporter Jesse Washington writes in a story this week on the debate.

Washington notes that the term “African American,” which came from the black intelligentsia, became popularized after the Rev. Jesse Jackson used it in the 1980s. Jackson told reporters at the time: “Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical, cultural base. African-Americans have hit that level of cultural maturity.”

But not everyone today prefers to be called African American. According to a January 2011 The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll [PDF], 42 percent of respondents said they preferred to be called black, compared to 35 percent who preferred African American (13 percent said it didn’t matter). From Washington’s story:

“I prefer to be called black,” said Shawn Smith, an accountant from Houston. “How I really feel is, I’m American.”

“I don’t like African-American. It denotes something else to me than who I am,” said Smith, whose parents are from Mississippi and North Carolina. “I can’t recall any of them telling me anything about Africa. They told me a whole lot about where they grew up in Macomb County and Shelby, N.C.”

Gibré George, an entrepreneur from Miami, started a Facebook page called “Don’t Call Me African-American” on a whim. It now has about 300 “likes.”

“We respect our African heritage, but that term is not really us,” George said. “We’re several generations down the line. If anyone were to ship us back to Africa, we’d be like fish out of water.”

“It just doesn’t sit well with a younger generation of black people,” continued George, who is 38. “Africa was a long time ago. Are we always going to be tethered to Africa? Spiritually I’m American. When the war starts, I’m fighting for America.”

There are complexities beyond those who don’t feel a connection to Africa. As Washington notes, there are white people from Africa. I have Egyptian-American friends who find themselves torn when having to identify official forms as either “Caucasian” (which they feel is inaccurate) or “African American.” Black Latinos, who make up 10 percent of D.C.’s Latino population, face having to identify with one group over the other. D.C., which is home to 18,000 black immigrants from African and Caribbean countries, has one of the largest expatriate Ethiopian communities in the world. There have been tensions between the African immigrant community and D.C.’s “other” black community. So is lumping everyone together as African Americans the best way to describe a community? Is using “black” fraught with other kinds of pitfalls? What’s your take?

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Last week, I wrote about my decision to drop my “Americanized” name in favor of my Persian birth name, and a number of you chimed in about the perils and pitfalls of having a foreign name in the U.S.

The choice to drop or legally change such a name can be complicated. For some, birth names don’t match the common name structure in the United States. Commenter Curtis Alia writes that U.S. officials documented the wrong last name for his Arab father when he immigrated to the U.S. due to misunderstanding the Arab naming structure:  “When I was born, I was given that same incorrect last name, and only until 1994 did we finally change our names to the actual family names from back home.”

Some immigrants make the decision to legally change their names rather than adopt an informal nickname, and marriage presents a convenient opportunity to do so. But that decision could mean losing a meaningful connection. Commenter island girl in a land w/o sea, who is an immigrant with a Spanish name, writes:

When I got married, I changed my name to my husband’s more “American” family name — a choice that i still struggle with. At the time, I was tired of people mangling my last name and making assumptions based on it. Yet now that my parents are gone, I sometimes wish that I had retained my father’s name, or at the very least, come up with some sort of compound-name compromise.

The practice of adopting “Americanized” nicknames becomes less popular in communities with growing immigrant populations. Leslie Berestein Rojas, from our sister blog Multi-American, writes that particularly in L.A. “this phenomenon” of adopting an “Americanized” name “is not so much the norm any more with Latinos, the majority-minority, but it remains relatively commonplace with other groups”

And sometimes “Americanized” names just sound plain ridiculous. Commenter jaded used to work at a company owned by a Persian man:

I remember at one point his family friend joined the company with a very Persian name. He created a name that was completely silly, it sounded like a comic book character.  It caused immense laughter in the office when ever he used it during business meeting.  Frankly, we preferred learning to pronounce people’s real names. I always wonder how hard it was for [the owner] when he first came to the U.S. after the Iranian Revolution, and how it became so important to have an “American name”

I can only guess what the “comic book character” name is, but the anecdote reminded me of a joke by Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani (which can be seen in the middle of this clip):

Some of my friends just gave up on the whole thing and became Italian. You ever met those guys — the Middle Eastern-Italian guys? I got a buddy, he’ll be at a party and meet some girls. He’ll be like this: “Come meet my friends over here, come over here, come on. This is Hassan, Hossein, Ali, Reza, Mohammed, Maz — and I’m Tony!”

Flickr: The White House

President Barack Obama

Aside from the politically-charged debate surrounding President Barack Obama’s decision to reveal his long-form birth certificate this week, the story highlighted something for me on a highly personal level: questioning the “American-ness” of second-generation Americans.

First, a word about me: I’m Iranian-American, born and raised in D.C. and Maryland, respectively. And on the numerous occasions I’ve been asked, “Where are you from?” I give the accurate response to that question: D.C. and Maryland. Rural Maryland, in fact, where bringing cowbells to both football games and high school graduations is the norm, and a common excuse for being late to class is claiming you got stuck behind a tractor on a two-lane road. I can’t think of anything more stereotypically small-town American.

My response is typically met with a blank stare, and perhaps a follow-up of “No, really. Where?” I know the answer I gave is not the one wanted, despite its accuracy.

If President Obama has to prove his “American-ness,” what hope is there for the rest of us? I usually conduct my daily life oblivious to the fact that perhaps some people view me as less American than my white and black brothers and sisters. And the stark rise in hate crimes against people of my ethnicity gives me even more reason to feel anxious.

Asking “Where are you from?” may seem innocent enough, and I have no doubt that the vast majority of the people who ask it of me don’t mean to imply that I’m not American – it’s often asked by people who have nothing but nice things to say about Persian culture. But regardless of its intent, the question reminds me that because of my appearance and “exotic” name, I’m “other.” It assumes that I can’t possibly be from “here.”

I know I’m not alone. One in five children in the U.S. has at least one immigrant parent (three percent of U.S. children have a Middle Eastern parent). In D.C., 19,000 of the city’s 111,000 children were born in the U.S. to immigrant parents. How many of them are asked where they are from?

All of this isn’t to say that I, or other second-generation Americans, aren’t also proud of our heritage and roots. But to be American means living in a multicultural (and increasingly multiracial) society. Does one ethnic group really have more of a right to claim American identity than another? (Notable exception: Native Americans.) I, like all of us, can be both proud to be an American and celebrate my heritage. I take back the cowbell and tractor comment — I can’t think of anything more American than that.