Identity revisited...

I haven't actually gotten questions concerning race or anything for a while now. Needless to say, yesterday I was definitely caught off guard. I met with my new tutee (is that right?), well girl that I tutor anyway, for the first time. She seemed really excited. She's a cute girl, maybe 9 or 10. So she says to me 'when I lived in the US for a year, my best friend was black...' To be honest I was a little taken aback. I'm not exactly sure why really, she said it really innocently and with a happy face. I kind of laughed a little and just said oooooh lol. Her mom who was with us, I guess noticed the look on my face (I really can't hide anything). She asked if saying 'black' was a common or the best term to use. My reply was really it depends on the person, then I started talking about how some prefer african american, but I told her I didn't care, because honestly I don't. I actually prefer someone calling me black over african american because african american can mean many different things, well to me anyway (i.e. I immigrated from Africa to the US, my parents are from Africa originally, or my family background in purely African). For me none of these are true, which is why I leave 'african american' for people who are truly african american. I have basically no knowledge of my origins in Africa, but I do know of my origins from the west indies, which is why I went on to explain to her that I'm actually west indian american. Long story short, I think I confused her about the term 'black' even more than she was lol!
Since I've been in Korea (a year now) I realized that I've been talking about 'black' a lot. I felt at one point that I was the ambassador of blackness. I'm assuming most here don't come across many black people. So of course many will not understand the scope of the black diaspora (not even gonna get into that right now). It used to be somewhat annoying, but hey people ask questions because they want to be educated. So, now I use it as an opportunity to spread knowledge.