[user104658]

Originally Posted by smudgie

African American surely means someone whose roots are from the Continent of Africa.
As to not knowing which precise country they originate from makes no different, they are from the continent.
Africans were the natives of the country of Africa, and as such were only ever the black people.
White people born in Africa would be classed as whatever country they were born in.
Whites from South Africa would be South African or Afrikaners.
I have many cousins born in South Africa who would not consider themselves as African, on the other hand the younger generation wonder why they can’t be called African.

Exactly Smudgie - a white person in America with Ancestry from an African country (South Africa for example) is not African American because white South Africans do not have African heritage - they are, generally, ethnically European.