That makes more sense. Police officers without proper training, upbringing and systems in place that keep checks on the forces themselves will get desensitized to violence, brutality and illegal practices.

Constantly justifying fucked up events they performed, had to witness, were coerced to participate in, were victims of or had to keep silent about changes the moral compass and changes the way they think about wrong actions.

> Because "African" is my ethnicity & American is my nationality

This is just an evolution of the deep seated racism within US culture, which recognizes it as bad but hasn't been too long to be able to move from it, so :"ethnicity" has taken somewhat a function to transition.

I'll give an example of something that happened with an US online friend who asked me what was my ethnicity, I told him "I'm Chilean" - "No, but what's your ethnicity?". What he wanted to know is what I look like, which is not a key component of ethnic background as is cultural background. being Chilean is my ethnic background. I also have Italian citizenship due direct descendancy but in my country calling myself "italian or half-italian" would be considered ridiculous because I have never even set foot in there once, it's not where I grew up and don't share any cultural background with Italians.

Your ethnicity can't be "African" because to start with "African" isn't and can't be an ethnicity. Ethnicity is a shared group of characteristics that have to do with cultural heritage and shared worldview, not just what you look like. An entire continent doesn't and can't have common ground to create that connection. I would be a wide and misguided generalization. Just like Latin Americans are also not an ethnic group because it composes millions that have literally no common cultural ground, not even the language as local usage varies wildly between countries.

The misuse of "ethnicity" on the US comes down to keep doing racial profiling and categorization, which is honestly a natural progress on the path of adaptation to move on from backwards customs but that doesn't make it correct or desirable.

> Some of yall are bothered by the simple fact others have any little connection to their homeland

I don't think people are "bothered" rather than confused because you having family that came from Africa and just that is not part of your ethnic background, just like me having Italian grandparents also isn't. This doesn't deny that your family came from Africa or if you feel like you have a connection but you can't really sit with someone from Nigeria and honestly tell you are part of the same general cultural group, which is what ethnicity is.

Lmao, the US is the world leading gun owning country but they can strip you naked at a fucking airport, so much freedom. Among many other things that are seen as backwards or weird.

Either people there love to be manhandled or maybe guns and "freedom" don't have much of a connection.

People do get it, but having restrictions and a different legal name makes it not the same, these things are known to everyone and creates segmentation, even if by a little. Equalizing name and rights officializes acceptance and nullifies legal differences, this helps further normalization making the homophobic reactions more fringe given they are against something that's official, normal, established.

It's not like people think gay couples were actively shunned and this will magically change things overnight, but as it had happened everywhere else where marriages rights get normalized, it also helps normalizing acceptance even further.