At any rate. One political correctness bandwagon that I am riding is the “America” problem, in which citizens of the USA (and its government actually) believe that they are the only ones that should be called Americans. Even though the two entire continents and the connecting isthmus, containing 34 separate nations in addition to the USA, are called America.
I guess I first became aware of the resentment felt by our neighbors about 10 years ago from comments made by a Canadian friend – because we Americans are nothing if not self-aware. Am I right? And it’s really come to be in the forefront of my mind after being in Costa Rica and now while I’m in Spain. Here I’ve met so many people from Latin America – Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, etc. I noticed that when these folks asked me where I’m from, if I slipped up and said “I’m American” instead of “US”, everything would get really quiet. It didn’t take me long to connect the dots… Because… duh… they are too. Americans, that is.
Let’s put it in terms not so close to home. Imagine if, after the establishment of the European Union, Belgium said “Oh, the EU parliament is in our country, so we’re gonna be calling ourselves Europeans from now on”. People who heard this would look at each other and say, ummm, yeah, ok, weird but whatever…? And then these new Europeans proceeded to rename their governmental offices in countries around the globe the European Embassy, the European Consulate. And soon people needing to do business with the EU would come to these offices only to be told after standing in the line for four hours “Oooh, you’ll need to go to an EU office for that; here we only do the business for the country of Belgium, yeah.” And the confused and exhausted person would say “But the sign says ‘European Embassy’”, and the Embassy guy would say, “Oooh, yeah, that’s because in Belgium our citizens are called Europeans, pretty cool, eh?” (Not sure why my Belgique has a Canadian accent, but hey, this shit writes itself.) The confused person would say “No, not cool, because there’s a trade alliance called the European Union! And there’s a land mass called Europe that’s been around since long before either Belgium or the European Union existed! And you people in Belgium calling yourselves Europeans is just confusing shit! Not to mention showing arrogant disregard for all those other countries in the EU… or in Europe… or both!”
In taking Spanish classes, I noticed that while the books identify a female citizen of Italy an italiana (yep, no cap, ending with ‘a’ for female) and a male citizen of China as a chino (ending with ‘o’ for male), in the main Spanish language a US citizen (male or female, yay! for gender equality!!) is called estadounidense, which would translate into United-States-ese.
And so, since change begins at home, and even though you’ve got a lot more to worry about - what with the empire crumbling around you – maybe you can find it in your heart to stop calling yourselves Americans and say “I’m a United Statesian.” Don’t do it for me. Do it for your gardener.