" 
 :I've never heard anyone try to figure out what percentage ""African"" someone who looks African-American is, and then try to label them based on it. ""Mixed race"" is a concept that doesn't apply in the US. I've heard of it being used in South Africa or in Central America, since it refers to the mixing of Europeans and the native peoples, but the experience here is completely different. I'm betting that if you tried to say that anyone appearing to be African-American who had any white, Latino, Asian, native American or other non-African ancestors was ""mixed race"" and not ""African-American"", you'd slice the population so many ways, it would be meaningless. It's a silly idea to say he's not African-American, just as it would be silly to say I'm not Irish-American because only one of my great-grandparents is from Ireland.   "