I'm a little confused - are you talking about Black South Africans? Hmm.

I foolishly expected that people like Elon Musk could be truthfully called "African-American", but I did a survey of the definitions, and most all of them agreed that an African-American must be Black (and I'm not sure how that is recursively defined, or whether it has to do with race, ethnicity, or simply color of skin: it must be the latter if it has any meaning separate from "African"!)

Typically, African-American means black AND, unintuitively, American for generations IME. Maybe it shouldn't mean that but that's kind of assumed where I live at least. For first or second generation Americans you might use the country (eg Nigerian-American). For other races from Africa you'd also rarely hear them referred to as African American.

Of course, part of the issue here is that there isn't really a good shorthand term for "the group of American Black people of diverse African origin whose cultures were oppressed and destroyed by the white majority for centuries, leading to a mélange culture intentionally constructed out of the remaining scraps".

But "Caucasian" is (was?) used for people who for many generations weren't anywhere near Caucasus Mountains.

It's a bit weird from the outside tho cause if you're a white south-african and you hear the phrase used in America you'd be like "oh, I should refer to myself as an African-American" although unlike Americans, people generally only refer to themselves as being from the place once they have citizenship (and would therefore have learnt the intricacies of the American phrase) and even then many people choose not to.

American: "I'm Irish" Me: "No, you're not"

I'm extremely surprised that your SIL didn't know this. South African popular culture is heavily saturated by American popular culture.

Most South Africans are familiar with the fact that black Americans refer to themselves as African Americans. Heck, Oprah used to be must-watch afternoon/evening TV in South Africa during the 90s and 2000s. In fact, there was probably better representativity of African Americans than black South Africans on SA English TV in that era.

It's not too surprising in America, but I know a person who would refer to any Black person as African American in Europe. In most cases, neither party would have had set their foot in America in their lives.

For good or bad, in many underdeveloped places where black people are rare, they are intuitively perceived as Americans (which stereotypically means rich, cool, free and capable of teaching you great English) and treated with additional respect because of this.

I think parent talks about people in South Africa referring to themselves as ‘African American’.

Yes, this was happening in classrooms in South Africa.

I had a South African friend in middle and high school. They fled the country when it became popular to put a tire around a white person's neck, full it with gasoline, and light it. Mandela's wife promoted doing this.

They gained American citizenship. She became my African American friend. Everyone told me I was terrible for talking that way.

Heard my daughter using the n-word for her school mates (they ain't black) - they all listened to rap music and obviously our schooling system don't cover American history i.r.o slavery.

Had to explain to her why it would not be good idea to do that in the US.

I never believed in the idea of embracing an offensive word and somehow "taking out the sting" like rappers did.

We have a similiar word - the k word for blacks - it is fortunaly banned and if you used it on social media you clearly identify as a racist.