(‘[...] As such, you can't say "ye are"; thus no "ye're".’)

Why not? ‘Ye’ was also used as ‘thou’, wherefore ‘thou art/are’ is ‘ye are’, ‘ye’re’.

Apparently, ‘ye’re’ and ‘ye’ve’ are English, though deemed archaic.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ye

Maybe ‘yer’ and ‘yers’ exist too (?).

‘‘By far, common usage and every formal definition I have checked, is simply "American of African descent" with an occasional addendum of "especially of black African descent"’’

Hyphenated or not, there’s a distinction made by African-Americans themselves (and non-African-Americans) between African-Americans (which some also write unhyphenated) and other black Americans, who aren’t descended from the United States’ slaves.

Some even make the distinction reversed, ‘Black American’ referring to people whose ancestors endured US slavery and ‘African(-)American’ referring to otherwise black Americans. Nonetheless, the distinction is clearly often made, usually by Americans whose forebears were enslaved in the United States.

‘‘Further, I have often seen the idea that African-American might refer to "descended from black slaves..." portrayed as itself a form of naive and provincial bigotry stemming from a stereotypical and false notion that all "blacks" in the US are descended from slaves, ignoring the rich and varied cultures and origins of African-Americans here’’

I see not how the foregoing is at all relevant to ‘African-American’’s meaning. I guess most African-Americans, who knowledgeably use the ‘African-American’–‘African American’ distinction, must be ‘bigotted’ then ... ?

However, since one can’t always know every black person’s heritage, be it African-American, Caribbean, African, South American, Malagasy or what not, it’s better to just use the all-encompassing term ‘black’ instead of trying to be ‘politically correct’ (ugh) and assigning the person in question a wrong ethnicity, such as ‘African-American’ when, in fact, they may well be from Barbados.

I stand by my intial statement that ‘African-American’ (hyphenated), which may also be written ‘Afro-American’ (hyphenated), specifically refers to the descendants of United States’ Black slaves.

The vast majority of African-Americans I know concur, likewise acknowledging that Barack, for instance, is, by descent, an African American (unhyphenated) but not African-American (hyphenated), as he isn’t descended from the United States’ slave population.

The distinction between the terms isn’t useless, either. Anthropologically, not only do the African-American population share a collective history, struggles and often identity but also are ethnically distinct from African Americans.

Ignore the inverted commas following the first sentence.

njtt, I disagree. Rarely used and/or unfamiliar to some people, a word or form isn’t necessarily unacceptable/incorrect. ‘’

Since ‘Jerusalemward/s’ has been used by Geoffrey Chaucer (‘[...] Jerusalemward the righte wey to ryde’) and other significant writers since him, such as S.R. Crockett (‘[...] cheered the way of the Master Jerusalemwards with strewn palm leaves and shouted hosannas’) and Professor A.C. Spearing (‘[...] and be a trewe pilgrim to Jerusalemward [...]’, I’d say ‘Jerusalemward/s’ certainly is an established word, though uncommon to some.

Moreover, even if some affixed words haven’t been used before, insofar as they follow the logic of other so affixed words with only one clear possible denotation, they’re acceptable. That’s why verbs can be affixed with ‘-worthy’, even if the resulting word is new, since such words consistently have only one possible denotation (=worth/deserving [verb]), whereas forming new words by affixing ‘-worthy’ to nouns should be avoided, since ‘[noun]worthy’ words have multiple different denotations and follow no single established rule unlike ‘[verb]worthy’ words.

Likewise, the affix ‘non-’ can be used with just about anything, even if the word formed is new, with its meaning being completely clear due to ‘non-’’s one consistent denotation (=not [word]). The same applies to ‘-ward/s’ insofar there’s one clear meaning.

Were it not so, it would most likely be mentioned in their respective entries in oxforddictionaries.com as in the case of affix ‘-wise’.

Because ‘sunward’ exists, that makes me wonder if ‘Sunward’ is correct too. It would be useful a distinction, since there’s the Sun (our star) and the sun (the light or warmth of the Sun).

Also, if ‘Jerusalemwards’ is correct (?), can ‘-ward/s’ be suffixed to other cities/locations, such as in the examples ‘The snowstorms’s trajectory is New Yorkward’ and ‘The aeroplane flew Pariswards’.

The following are what I found, searching for ‘Jerusalemwards’:

http://www.google.fi/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=fi&rlz=1W1SHCN_enFI457&source=hp&q=travelled+Jerusalemwards&rlz=1W1SHCN_enFI457&pbx=1&oq=travelled+Jerusalemwards&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=6221l22757l0l23083l40l28l7l1l1l1l372l5714l0.13.14.1l35l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=8c39c924cd3c1f5&biw=1680&bih=811

Correction: Of course, with ‘un[...]worthy’, I meant the thing mentioned is NOT worth/deserving swimming, watching and buying respectively.