Are You A Regular American?

I was hanging out at the bus stop with my kid this morning making small talk with a small group of elementary school kids, between the ages of about 7 and maybe 10 and somehow we got talking about cousins and one of the kids was talking about his cousin who is adopted and happens to be African American but the mom, whom I know, is a single white female. The specific quote was "my cousin is African American but his Mom is a regular American."

Reminded me of something I heard long ago when the term African American first started to take hold. Not an exact quote but along the lines of "you can not expect to be treated like an American when you insist on being called something other than an American".