You Can't Be an African-American If You're White

This is what happens when we start labeling people according to politically correct standards:

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. - A former student claims in a lawsuit that the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey discriminated against him for the way he described his background in classroom discussions on cultural diversity.

Paulo Serodio said that in 2006, he told a professor and classmates that he was "white, African, American," which he says accurately reflects the fact that he was born in Mozambique but later became a U.S. citizen.

He said some classmates and staff members at New Jersey Medical School found it offensive that a Caucasian man would call himself "African-American" and that the fallout led to harassment and eventually his suspension from the school.

Serodio, who lives in Newark, said some school employees and students told him not to describe himself as "African-American." In the aftermath of his comments, Serodio said, flyers were hung around the school mocking him, he was assaulted and his car was vandalized.

His lawyer, Gregg Zeff, said Serodio eventually was suspended for "conduct unbecoming" a student.

The suspension came directly from his remarks in class, Zeff said.

Serodio filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Newark on Monday. He is seeking damages from the university and several faculty members and administrators.

I guarantee you he's more legitimately African-American than Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.

And how about this blast from the past:

Teresa Heinz Kerry: I'm an 'African American'

First lady wannabe Teresa Heinz Kerry sometimes describes herself as an "African American," even though she grew up amidst segregated privilege in colonial Mozambique.

"My roots are African," she told a reporter in 1995. "The birds I remember, the fruits I ate, the trees I climbed, they're African."

Throughout the 1990s, Heinz Kerry referred to herself as "African American," the Baltimore Sun revealed on Tuesday. And when her use of the term set off a firestorm of controversy in 1993, she defended the claim.

"African-hyphen-American belongs to blacks," Heinz Kerry's spokesman told reporters, insisting that it was proper for his boss to call herself African American as long as no hyphen was used or intended.

Gotta watch out for those intended hyphens.