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I don't think it's wrong, but I don't think it helps anything.
Yes, language does have an extremely profound impact on perception. Language is the main tool of social and neural building for human beings. To say that these kinds of qualifiers have no impact on social cohesion, I think, is naive.
"American" is not an ethnicity, and adding your ethnicity into it suggests that you wish to be set apart from just "American." Perhaps you don't wish it, but even then, that is how it goes into other people's brains.
I won't say it's by any means the sole cause of the sharp racial divides we have in this country, but it is certain it reinforces it.
I think this is more detrimental than purely ideological based divisions, because it basically forces an entire artificial framework that isn't actually based on any shared character or belief, and in the absence of any logical explanation for otherising yourself, it's inevitable illogical explanations will arise. That does nothing but deepen the stereotype the races.
I am not going to call anyone out for doing it. I don't think it's "wrong." But I don't think it's helpful, and the fact that people feel such a need to include it even when people can readily see what color they are is a symptom and perhaps a contributor to bad racial relations.
So what do you think Identity politics does to cohesiveness?
Identity politics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia