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.

On that note...
In high School we had a black kid from New Zealand in some of my classes..
He got into an argument with an "African American" and somehow the New Zealander got called an African American.
He literally went crazy and beat teh pomegranate out the other kid.
Yelling awkward racial profanities AND Anti-american ones.
I found it hilarious.