"African-American" vs. "black" at the Olympics

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:10 PM -0500 3/9/06, Wilson Gray wrote:
>  > >> From King Kaufman's sports column on Salon:
>>  >>
>>  >> -----
>>  >>
>>  >>
>>
>>http://www.salon.com/sports/col/kaufman/2006/03/07/tuesday/index1.html#olympics
>>  >>
>>  >> Two weeks ago I wrote about NBC giving American speed skater Shani
>>  >> Davis short shrift by calling him "the first African-American" to win
>>  >> an individual gold medal at the Winter Olympics when he was in fact
>>  >> the first black person of any nationality to do so.
>>  >>
>>  >>
>
>
>True, but had he not been American, I, for one, wouldn't have cared.
>
>-Wilson
>
What's interesting about this to me is that each of the two possible
observations--

Shani Davis is the first black (person) to win an individual gold
medal at the Winter Olympics.
Shani Davis is the first African-American to win an individual gold
medal at the Winter Olympics.

--is informative in a way the other isn't, at least if the
hearer/reader was not already aware of S.D.'s nationality.   That is,
neither entails the other.

Larry

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org