Instead of dealing with the fact that stigmas aren’t inherent in words and titles but in people’s brains and hearts, we just hop from designation to designation as if that will solve the problem. Sort of like removing the word hatred from someone’s vocabulary will successfully extinguish the emotion the word represents.

Steven Pinker deals with this linguistic slipperiness in “The Blank Slate.” If you haven’t read it, give it a go.

If they are indeed from a different nation, there is no politically correct term that I am aware of that I can use in the US.

I remember seeing a couple of black Poles on television during the seven years I lived there. I smiled, thinking, “Should I call them African Poles?”

Lastly, I had a French professor who was from Egypt. For all intents and purposes, she looked white. Yet, as she pointed out, she was more African American than the majority of those who call themselves (or are called) African American.