African-American vs actor

African-American and actor both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
African-American	Yes	Yes	No	No
actor	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, actor is a hypernym of African-American; that is, actor is a word with a broader meaning than African-American:

African-American: a person with African ancestry, "Negro" and "Negroid" are archaic and pejorative today
actor: a person who acts and gets things done

Other hypernyms of African-American include doer, worker.

African-American (noun)	actor (noun)
a person with African ancestry, "Negro" and "Negroid" are archaic and pejorative today	a theatrical performer
	a person who acts and gets things done

African-American (adjective)	actor (adjective)
pertaining to or characteristic of Americans of African ancestry