As I often, maybe too often, point out, we Americans are seldom more ridiculous than in our language, and we are never more ridiculous than when our language is racial. You may remember an instance from the 2002 Winter Olympics. I have written about it more than once. An American woman won a gold medal in the bobsled, and she was the first black woman ever to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics.

But NBC, the network covering the Games, had no way of communicating this fact to its viewers. Why? Because it had banned, at least de facto, the word “black.” So the NBC people were reduced to saying, “She’s the first African-American woman from any country to win a gold medal.” Yes, and that includes the African-American women in France, Nigeria, Australia, and so on.

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Why am I bringing this up again now? A couple of nights ago, I sat down to read a review of a book about Booker T. Washington in The New Republic. It began, “Once the most famous and influential African American in the United States (and probably the world), Booker T. Washington . . .”

Oh, come on. When will this nonsense stop? I will suggest when: when black Americans, in significant numbers, step forward and say, “Oh, come on. If you are going through these linguistic contortions for our benefit, no thank you. ‘Not in my name,’ in other words. The word ‘black’ is not radioactive, and it would be nice if white liberals stopped treating it as such.”

Nowhere is American immaturity more manifest than in matters racial. Environmental policy — including a quasi-religious stance against exploring and drilling for oil in ANWR — is possibly second. I also think of America’s strange, perverse aversion to nuclear power. Isn’t it kind of embarrassing that the French are more mature than we?

Incidentally, I interviewed Condoleezza Rice back in 2002, when she was national security adviser. She told me she preferred “black” to “African American.” Why? There were a couple of reasons: “Black” is parallel to “white.” And black Americans have been part of the American story from the very beginning. How odd to pick up “hyphenated Americanism” so late, you know?

One more quick one, before I get off this topic: I was perusing old Impromptus columns, via Google, and found that I commented on a USA Today article that told us that B. Smith, the businesswoman, had placed on the top of her Christmas tree an “African-American angel.” I found it interesting that her angel had a nationality. What are white angels? American, Danish, Russian . . .?

An end to nonsense would be awfully nice indeed.

Back to The New Republic: There is a review of The Clinton Tapes, by Taylor Branch, and this review contains a passage about a meeting that President Clinton had with the Chinese No. 1, Jiang Zemin.

Jiang read studiously from a text “about the glorious history of China and the folly of attempts to influence her internal affairs.” On and on he droned. At length, an exasperated Clinton interrupted. Look, he said. I don’t want to meddle in your internal affairs. I don’t even mind your prisons. I plan on putting more people in ours myself. All you need to do, Clinton confided, is to make a few gestures about human rights, and here are a couple of suggestions.

Did it really happen that way? Did the American president really say something like, “I don’t even mind your prisons. I plan on putting more people in ours myself”? Do we all understand the difference between American prisons and PRC prisons? I have spent a good part of my journalistic career discovering and reporting what the Chinese state does to people — innocent people — in prisons. Did Clinton really say that all the Chinese had to do was make a few gestures?

I suspected that Clinton regarded China mainly as a source of campaign fundraising, but I did not realize that he was as callous, cynical, and cavalier as this. I hope it’s not true. Sometimes you read something that causes an actual physical revulsion.

Speaking of Clintons, and speaking of assurances to China that the United States doesn’t care what Chinese authorities do to Chinese people: I saw a photo of Hillary Clinton the other day. She was in Pakistan, wearing a headscarf. I wondered the same thing I wondered when I saw former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, the Georgia radical, do the same: Doesn’t it bother her feminism just a little bit? Or is a concept of respect for Islam, and a certain kind of Islam, more important? Also, what message does the wearing of headscarves by American feminists send to women in the Muslim world who may wish to be free of this practice? Who may wish to have a choice about it?

McKinney, you may remember, went on al-Jazeera and said, smiling huge, “I am wearing the headscarf as a way of showing my respect, my support, and my familiarity for the audience of al-Jazeera Arabic.” Undoubtedly, many women watching television at that moment felt less than supported, and less than understood.

I’m liking Chris Christie, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in New Jersey, a lot. Why? Well, his Democratic opponents have been giving him a hard time for being overweight. They are using this as a campaign gambit. And Christie said, “We have to spur our economy. Dunkin’ Donuts, International House of Pancakes — those people need work too.” Right on.