In high school, my friends were Black. Then, I was in Atlanta for the Olympics and was hanging with a Black guy...."Puleeze, it is African American. Is my skin black?" I went away to Cornell and either seemed to be acceptable.

When I came out to Stanford, the guy in the apartment next door told me that he preferred "person of color." OK. So I start using person of color until a couple of guyz told me that they were Black and asked me if they looked like Indians? When I asked about African American as a descriptor, they asked, "Do you refer to yourself as English American?"

jay