The trouble with "Americans" --Part 1

The next article was written by John Ryle on September 7, 1998. He is a columnist with the British newspaper "The Guardian."

A reader in Ecuador takes me to task for my use of the word 'American'. Why, asks Lincoln Reyes, is it routine to use this word, without qualification, as a synonym for 'citizen of the United States' when the majority of Americans, properly speaking, are not from there, but from other countries in North, South or Central America? If you are a Latin American like him, he says, it is galling to be consistently written out of the geography of the continent that gave you birth. No wonder people regard the US as imperialist, when it appropriates the entire hemisphere for its own exclusive domain name. How do I think it feels to be Mexican, Chilean or Canadian, confronted every day with such linguistic chauvinism? What I think is that Mexicans and Canadians have got used to it. They've had to. It is not impossible to change the name of a country. (Where, we may ask, are the Zaires of yesteryear?) But renaming the most powerful country in the world is not on the agenda. When Osama bin Laden declares war on 'America', we know he does not include Ecuador or Mexico. The usage is worldwide and unlikely to change.

Does the US have some proprietorial claim on the name of the continent it occupies? Some kind of historical precedence? Not at all. Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian who almost certainly never set foot in North America. He did explore the coast of South America, however, and in the 16th century a German cartographer named the southern part of the continent after him; only later was the term extended to include the north. So the US calling itself 'America' is something like South Africa calling itself 'Africa', or the Federal Republic of Germany 'Europa'.

This column, though, has never been one to turn its back on lost causes. So let us ask why it is that, in an age of political correctness, of sedulous public avoidance of terms that can cause offence to nations and ethnic groups, America has been exempted from reproach?

The US is the home of political correctness. What Lincoln Reyes is suggesting is that it take a dose of its own medicine.