There were talks (and pictures) of someone losing the use of their thumb after opening up their wrist and fooling around with the ulnaris tendon due to being "triggered" and having a "panic attack" due to not being addressed by the proper pronoun.
What in the fresh hell. I don't get squicked easily, but that made me cringe. They went and opened their own...and went and poked around in there...ick. That's insane.
On that note of proper terminology for races you brought up, "African American" doesn't really apply to...black people, for lack of a better term, who don't live in the US. You could say "African <insert country here>" I guess, but that's just getting pedantic. I'd think the nicest term would just be "black" so long as it's not spoken with any demeaning intentions. Of course, I'm hardly one to talk, since I ain't black.
Political Correctness 101:
At least where I live, everyone (white, black, and other) says "black" as an adjective in common speech, with "African-American" being more of a formality. However, to refer to a person as "[a/the] black" as a noun or to multiple people as "blacks" is still mildly offensive or at least rude, with "black [person/guy/man/woman]" being the accepted form.
To me it makes sense, mostly because it falls in with other things like not saying "the gays" which are more common sense. However, it should be noted that this rule does not apply to all minorities. For example, we say "an Asian [person/guy/man/woman]" but the common plural is "the Asians". Singular "Jew" and plural "Jews" are also acceptable, though there are a few people (generally not Jews themselves) who hold otherwise. "Jew" as an adjective is pretty much never acceptable.