I’m writing a paper about end of life care and minority groups, and I have a question about terminology.

Some papers use the term “African American” others (fewer) use “Black” and I am unsure which term to use. My preference is for “Black” simply because it’s shorter and sounds equivalent to “white” and “Hispanic” and “Asian” which are the other terms I am using. (I have other problems with Hispanic, primarily that I think it’s way to inclusive–how can you say that a Cuban immigrant is equivalent to a Mexican immigrant is equivalent to a Colombian immigrant. Then it’s not like Polish immigrants and German immigrants and Irish immigrants are anything alike either, so at least we’re consistently broad.)

So is there a preferred term? Is one term more or less offensive than another? (And just out of curiosity, why?)