Racism and grouping

I was really interested in what was said in the presentations about Edmona Lewis and how she, and other people of minority descent are bunched together as “African America” and yet they are of mixed race. This also corresponds to conversations that have some up in other classes, for instance the du Sable monument that is proposed or mean to be built by Navy Pier. The Du Sable foundation had rejected two of the proposed monuments because they did not look “African American” enough, but Du Sable was Haitian and French. When I brought this up in class everything got really quiet for a moment, and then we just moved on. People are apparently not overly comfortable talking about this as it seems to border on labeling people but isn’t that exactly the point? That people are being put into these groups that are not correct? It seems a lot like people trying to ignore different races in an attempt to be super not racist, and are just being a ignorant of our cultural uniqueness.