Describing things with the adjective "black" is racist?

I actually had a friend in elementary school (who was a black girl my age - we were 8 or 9 at the time) tell me that she preferred being called "black" to being called "African American." Her parents were from Jamaica, and her family had been Jamaican for several generations, and so she felt like she identified with the Jamaican culture - not the African American culture.

I think a lot of people just take things too far - about most subjects, really. For every respectable person who's doing a good job promoting equality and African American culture (and yes, there are quite a few of those), there's some idiot out there spouting about how black holes are racist. It just goes to show that there are idiots in every culture.