Bridge the Cultural Gap

Once, during the course of a conversation with a colleague who was a woman of color, I happened to refer to her as an African American. Her response left me confused. "Don`t call me that," she said. "I`ve never been to Africa; I don`t know the first thing about Africa. You can call me black or you can call me an American, but don`t call me African American." She went on to ask me why, if a white person from South Africa became a US citizen, no one would ever refer to that person as African American. Of course, I didn`t have a response.

And not too long ago, I met a man who bemoaned the fact that everyone automatically refers to him as African American, despite the fact that he has only recently emigrated from Ghana. "I`m African, but I`m certainly not an American," he said.

"For census purposes, we`re asked to fit ourselves into one of five categories," says Cornelia Gamlem, president of the GEMS Group, a human resources consulting firm based in Herndon, Virginia. These racial/ethnic categories are as follows: white, black, Asian and Pacific Islander, Hispanic, and American Indian, Eskimo or Aleut. "While people of the same race may share similarities, there are many cultural differences that need to be recognized."

For instance, a person who checks "black" on the census form may be American-born, or may hail from elsewhere, such as the Caribbean or an African nation. Likewise, a Hispanic person may be from places as disparate as New York City, Mexico, Cuba or Brazil. "The problem is that there may be a tendency to make assumptions about people, just by looking at their obvious characteristics," says Gamlem. "I see your skin is black, so I lump you into the African American category and figure that you`re just like everybody else who grew up in t