Over the years, I’ve commented on the occasional awkwardness of the term “African American.” Sometimes it won’t communicate what you wish to.

I brought up this issue in a piece I wrote for National Review last year, “Adventures in Lexical Fashion: Today’s progressive term may become tomorrow’s slur.”

At the 2002 Winter Olympics,

an American named Vonetta Flowers was part of a two-woman bobsled team. She and her partner won the gold, making Flowers the first black person ever to win a gold medal at the Winter Games. But the poor NBC announcers had no way to report that fact — because they were forbidden, apparently, to say “black.” So they wound up saying, “She’s the first African American from any country to win a gold medal!”

I thought of this the other day when President Obama was in Kenya, talking about gay rights. He said, “As an African American in the United States, I am painfully aware of the history of what happens when people are treated differently under the law.”

An African American in the United States? As opposed to . . . in Finland?

You see the problem.

P.S. I was just on the White House website, and found this heading: “Remarks by President Obama to the People of Africa.” Okay, but that is awfully grand, right? I think of something that Jonah, I believe, said in 2008, after Obama gave his big speech in Berlin. The candidate’s tone had a sense of “Greetings, Earthlings!”