[update: Someone here says that Americans already have "multigenerally mixed" as terminology. I'm a little surprised at the lack of usage of this term which accurately describes Southern African Coloured people to a T.]

I know someone brought up the recent Tyla-Coloured issue on this subreddit before but there's a specific thing I want to ask about here.

Full disclosure, I'm asking this as a Black South African.

Some context for those who don't know what I'm alluding to. In Southern Africa (although as a South African I'll be discussing it in the context of my country specifically), we have many races, Black African, White, Indian, Asian, Coloured, Mixed-race, etc.

The term Coloured (being a mixture of two or more races), and not the same as Colored (please note that both of these terms have their own Wikipedia pages).

Part of my confusion about the American response to the realisation that the term Coloured is used in South Africa, is that Americans don't seem to provide an alternative America-friendly term that they would use to refer to a Coloured person in an "American conversation". I find that people tend to insist on pointing out that the term Coloured shouldn't be used in America but provide no legitimate terminology for a Coloured person to use in America. To put it to you another way, in South Africa I speak of a pavement. When I'm in America I happily speak of a sidewalk instead, because I have an awareness of the local terminology used to refer to the same thing.

One of the cheaper arguments made is that Coloured people should not be referring to themselves as Coloured because it's offensive. Personally, as someone who has very easily understood that Black Americans have happily co-opted an actual slur (the N-word), which is still in use today as a slur, I'm not sure why they draw the line at Coloured South Africans continuing to identify by a term was never even a slur in South Africa in the first place. Wondering why Coloured people are okay being referred to as Coloured is a bit like asking a women why they are okay being referred to as women, or African people in general why we are okay being referred to as Africans: In response to such a question a person would say "because that's what I am".

I'm not sure if it's because Americans can't wrap their heads around what Colouredness actually is. It's not the same thing as just being mixed race. When there are entire families, neighbourhoods, schools, churches of mostly Coloured people, when there are dialects of English and Afrikaans that are spoken by Coloured people, when there is Coloured cuisine (basically an entire culture), it seems this goes beyond your run-of-the-mill "My dad is one race and my mother is a different race" situation. What you have here, is a specific race of people whose classification, as clumsy as it may seem at times, is as legitimate as the classification Black African, white, Asian, etc. To further highlight to you my confusion on this matter, the only demographic in the US where this issue tends to be discussed is the Black community even though the South African term Coloured does not imply that the individual has mostly African heritage. Ethnic-mixing does not always revolve around Blackness so it's strange that this conversation is had in relation to Blackness, when a Coloured person could just as easily have predominately South Asian or Dutch heritage.

Based on your own views, or those that you've observed, is there any reason apart from the ignorant assumption that American English terminology is more legitimate than South African English terminology, that some Black Americans:
a) dismiss the Southern African term Coloured as offensive (whilst Southern Africans don't delegitimise Black American sentiment around Colored), and
b) Don't provide an alternative term (to be used in American conversation) reserved for referring to Southern African Coloureds (granting them recognition of their specific race in American conversation)?