Why is it deemed racist to call blacks black but not whites white?

Here in Northern Australia there's a large Indigenous population, and that's the only currently acceptable word, Indigenous. Anything else, even "Aboriginal" will call a storm down on your head, or worse.
It's like everything human though, there's fads and fashions, it's always changing, and that's why you end up getting a smile from one person and a smack in the mouth from the next, for using the same word!
I can't see any "solution" to this, it's unfortunately normal human behaviour.

Isn't that because Aboriginal is the name the White Man gave them?

I have noticed though, now on TV and some daytime talk shows, that the term 'African American' is being used and I no longer hear 'Black'. I can't see how the term 'Black' could be racist. It has been used for years by people and on TV/movies.

I have never heard of such a thing!!!

It's not racist to call a black person black. Something that made me laugh was when a white American politician referred to a Jamaican guest speaker as an 'African American'.

Any black people i know don't seem to mind being referred to as black.

The thing that confuses me most is when people call a Pakistani person a Paki why is that racist? when it's acceptable to call a British person a Brit, an Australian an Aussie and an American a Yank (no offense intended to anyone from any of those countries they're the first ones that came into my head).

Personally i really don't think that term is racist, it's just an abbreviation of their country of birth.

Nah, up until PC happened, it was a descriptive word, it basically means the same thing as "Indigenous",..local people.
Once all the "sensitivities" happened, logic and common-sense went out the window, now I tend to just call them Aussies, and no-one's protested about that,....yet.

I never thought it was racist. It depends on how you say it and in what context... if you're just stating it....

I'm accustomed to hearing cops say "black male/female" or "white male/female" on TV. I was watching a new detective show on court TV and the cops were saying "male black" and "male white". That irritated me to no end because it sounds idiotic.

Yeah, well that makes sense too. Being in Melbourne, we don't really have that issue, as I'm guessing that it's too damn cold down here for them to want to spend any decent amount of time.

Look out on that Aussie thing....After all wasn't it The devil white man that named it Australia?

Yeah, ya can't win sometimes!

In the UK they use numbers... a white male is an IC1 and a black male is IC2.

you REALLY can't with all this bubble wrapped PC BS going on nowdays....<< that makes me sound as old as my age appears on here! I am pretty old school in my way of thinking though.

Yeah, caught that on "The Bill".
Seems crazy to me, to call them by race is unacceptable, assign a number to each race and use that instead, and it's different how ?

But on the other hand, have you noticed on crimestoppers recently? They'll give a description of the person, but say NOTHING about his skin colour. Looking at the photo of him, he's OBVIOUSLY Asian for example, but it's a medium sized man, with medium build, with dark hair, brown eyes, and was wearing a blue jumper, with dark jeans. They can say everything except Asian appearance, or has a dark complexion, or even if he's caucasian, so it's working both ways. But if their describing a criminal, that "will help with their investigation" they can't even say what race he is. Based on the information I gave above, that could be like 80% of australias population. But if you were to say he was of asian appearance or with a dark complexion, well that would at least narrow it down to around 75%