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Re: What's appropriate material...
Lief M. Hendrickson (hendrick@NOSC.MIL)
Sat, 18 Feb 1995 10:51:38 PST
On Feb 17, Ruby Rohrlich stated:
>Danny: as a Canadian born and bred, although now with American
>citizenship, I constantly come up against American ethnocentrism.
>Extremely galling is their invetereate use of the word "America" when
>they mean the U.S. ...
I noticed this as a glaring inconsistency though Thomas Rimkus
responded before I did. It's an excellent example of a spurious
claim of ethnocentrism which so many people love to make
nowadays. I'll not comment on ethnocentrism in other contexts,
but here's a person who bitterly complains about use of a word
yet she uses it in the same way! If she's concerned about this
word usage, she should say she has United States of American
citizenship.
We are handicapped with the name of our country. However, it's
not fair to say all persons in the U.S. that calls themselves
Americans are ethnocentric. And how long have we applied the
term Indians to people that have no relationship to India. Does
this also import some evil intent to people that use that term?
What do we call ourselves? States-ians? I wish I knew. It was
a trap in a visit to Argentina when someone responded "America"
to a question of where we live. They're American also. We're
North Americans; they're South Americans. Saying I live in
California solved the problem. "The States" was equally well
understood.
Can someone tell me what the AAA has to say about representation
of South America since "American" is part of their title?
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