“Black” is not an insult

Jay Nordlinger points out an lingering PCism:

At the Winter Olympics in 2002, an American woman won a gold medal in the bobsled. She happened to be the first black woman ever to win a gold medal in the Winter Games.

But the TV network (NBC) could not relate this fact. Why? Because, apparently, they were forbidden to say “black” — they had to say “African-American.” So they resorted to saying, “She’s the first African-American woman from any country to win a gold medal”!

An NRO reader adds: “Recently, I listened to an announcer refer to Lewis Hamilton, the rookie sensation Formula 1 driver from Hertfordshire, England, as African-American because there was simply no other acceptable way to refer to him.”

Being referred to as “African-American” is far more annoying to my friends from Nigeria and Ghana than being described as “black” or simply “African”, although in general they prefer to a reference to their country of origin. Ironically, those sophisticated Europeans that PC liberals normally so love to ape have never considered calling them anything other than “neri”, which is to say, “blacks”.