It doesn't make much sense anymore, but so it is:

> Most of us became familiar with the ethnonym African American in the 1980s, when Jesse Jackson began popularizing it as an alternative to black.

https://yalealumnimagazine.org/articles/4216-the-origin-of-a...

> African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans

Interesting example: Elon Musk is technically an "African American," except the word is actually used to mean Black American

similarly, I think Charlize Theron has joked about the same for her, how confused the terminology is.