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The Naming of America (2023)

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Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#71

Post by pessimizer »

Izkata wrote: post #61
JohnMakin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a time when "Black" was considered offensive and "African-American" was the generally-approved nomenclature. Eh, this is a little inaccurate - I don't think anyone but white people worked themselves up about this, and the distinction between "black" and "african american" was made because Americans with slave ancestry are not the only people who have dark skin color. It's also still in use and hasn't gone…

Whether or not it was mainly white people who did this, I do remember when I was a kid (late 90s/early 2000s) there was a hard push to just swap "black" for "African-American" no matter how little sense it made, because "black" was considered offensive. It's how we got one particular addition to the "ignorant American" meme videos, where people would go on vacation to Europe or Africa and call a black person born and…

> here was a hard push to just swap "black" for "African-American" no matter how little sense it made, because "black" was considered offensive.

This was a hard push from white people toward other white people, about being offended on the behalf of black people. Black people have never liked the term African-American, and most don't use it. The reasons why white people on either side of the "debate" wouldn't notice this or would operate as if this weren't true are left as an exercise for the reader.

-----

1991: Poll Says Most Blacks Prefer 'Black' to 'African-American' https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/29/us/poll-says-most-blacks-...

2021: New Poll Shows Black People Prefer to be Called Simply ‘Black’ Over ‘African American,’ Hispanics Aren’t Keen to Newly-Formed Label ‘LatinX’ https://atlantablackstar.com/2021/08/11/new-poll-shows-black...

Here's a stupid article pretending that black people who still call themselves black in 2012 are space aliens or Amish, when there was never a point when black people didn't call themselves black: Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American' https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna46264191

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#72

Post by pessimizer »

gotoeleven wrote: post #25
meiraleal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America being the name of the country isn't a problem, the problem is the people from this country calling Americans "latinos". Or Native-Americans, or Whatever-Americans because the only Americans are themselves.

The main reason people call themselves $HYPHENATION-americans is because they want some free stuff from the government for their particular $HYPHENATION

This is absolutely the reason. Except in the case of black people, for which it was something imposed by white people during the Clinton administration as a sort of twisted apology for destroying the Rainbow Coalition (who popularized "African-American.")

Once people saw that slaves and their descendants might be compensated in some way, or treated in a special way by government in lieu of compensation, they all wanted to become black. So after 1965 (the end of legal segregation in the US) they started hyphenating their ethnicities, or in the case of "hispanic," making up new ethnicities from whole cloth.

Compensation for slavery isn't "free stuff." You should give up your inheritance.

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#73

Post by Izkata »

pessimizer wrote: post #71
Izkata wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not it was mainly white people who did this, I do remember when I was a kid (late 90s/early 2000s) there was a hard push to just swap "black" for "African-American" no matter how little sense it made, because "black" was considered offensive. It's how we got one particular addition to the "ignorant American" meme videos, where people would go on vacation to Europe or Africa and call a black person born and…

> here was a hard push to just swap "black" for "African-American" no matter how little sense it made, because "black" was considered offensive. This was a hard push from white people toward other white people, about being offended on the behalf of black people. Black people have never liked the term African-American, and most don't use it. The reasons why white people on either side of the "debate" wouldn't notice t…

> This was a hard push from white people toward other white people, about being offended on the behalf of black people. Black people have never liked the term African-American, and most don't use it.

Doesn't matter because that's not the point of my comment. The person I was responding to said:

> and the distinction between "black" and "african american" was made because Americans with slave ancestry are not the only people who have dark skin color.

My point is there was no distinction. At the time, in the US, those two terms referred to the same group of people. The push was to replace "black" with "African-American", not to use whichever term was more appropriate.

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#74

Post by Cupertino95014 »

freetime2 wrote: post #70
psunavy03 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is argued" is a weaselly phrase that means nothing. It is argued that the Earth is flat, too. What's the evidence and what is the academic consensus?

To be fair, the author is definitely not arguing that America was discovered by Africans 3000 years ago. He is just providing some background regarding the controversy of who discovered and named the Americas. He also writes: > Further, other discoveries of America have been credited to the Irish who had sailed to a land they called Iargalon, the land beyond the sunset, and to the Phoenicians who purportedly came her…

> I think his use of "it has been argued", "have been credited to", and "purportedly" in this context are not weaselly, and are fine in reference to unsubstantiated arguments that people have made.

No, it IS weaselly. Unless there is any substance to the argument at all, it's like saying "it has been argued that the earth is flat."

Maybe say "it has been argued without evidence" like journalists do /s

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#75

Post by freetime2 »

Cupertino95014 wrote: post #74
freetime2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the author is definitely not arguing that America was discovered by Africans 3000 years ago. He is just providing some background regarding the controversy of who discovered and named the Americas. He also writes: > Further, other discoveries of America have been credited to the Irish who had sailed to a land they called Iargalon, the land beyond the sunset, and to the Phoenicians who purportedly came her…

> I think his use of "it has been argued", "have been credited to", and "purportedly" in this context are not weaselly, and are fine in reference to unsubstantiated arguments that people have made. No, it IS weaselly. Unless there is any substance to the argument at all, it's like saying "it has been argued that the earth is flat." Maybe say "it has been argued without evidence" like journalists do /s

On its own, "it has been argued that the earth is flat" is simply a factually correct statement. There is nothing weaselly about it. What would make it weaselly would be the context that it is used in, and the deceptive intent of the person saying it.

Similarly, in this article the author simply mentions - almost as an aside - that "a black African discovery of America, it has been argued, took place around 3,000 years ago, and influenced the development of Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations". It is a factually correct statement (in that it has indeed been argued) [1]. There are no other mentions of this theory in the article, no attempts made to substantiate or repudiate it, or build on it, and it's only tangentially related to the main point of the article.

Furthermore, in his closing the paragraph, the author says something that makes me believe he's skeptical about many of the alternative claims that he brings up:

> No definitive conclusions can be reached. Too many claims are, for lack of hard evidence, based on speculation. Theories about the true origin of the name are ultimately historical fictions, whose authors are inclined to impose their own political, cultural, or national agendas on the name and its origin.

Why do you say that the author is being "weaselly" here? What is his ulterior motive? And what other contextual evidence do you have that the author intends for us to take the statement at anything more than face value - that it's an alternative version of history that some people believe to be true?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_con...

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#76

Post by adastra22 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #67
Izkata wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not it was mainly white people who did this, I do remember when I was a kid (late 90s/early 2000s) there was a hard push to just swap "black" for "African-American" no matter how little sense it made, because "black" was considered offensive. It's how we got one particular addition to the "ignorant American" meme videos, where people would go on vacation to Europe or Africa and call a black person born and…

These narratives were not driven by black people. I know what you are referring to. It was never considered an offensive term by anyone who had any stake in it, it was purely contrived and performative nonsense for being “aware” when it was signaling only that they absolutely were not. Just my 2c as a PoC

Same goes for Indian vs Native American, which this thread started off with. Few Indians are offended by the phrase “Native American”, but it is cumbersome and not used to describe themselves. They’re perfectly fine with the term “Indian” and prefer it, even if it is etymologically wrong (sorry to the South Asians out there).

It’s an outsider combining in and saying “no, people can’t call you black” [or “Indian”] that is weirdly controlling and oppressive.

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#77

Post by adastra22 »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #46
meiraleal wrote: post #8

Intersting. In Brazil we argue that the US isn't America. Great to know that Brazil was first called America, not the US :)

i'm from the united states of america, mid 50s, and i always thought it's pretty random "america" implies the united states too.

Literally the only country with “America” in its name tho.

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#78

Post by adastra22 »

meiraleal wrote: post #24
gerdesj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine. You have your terminology and others have theirs. It might (not) surprise you to learn that what I call Cyprus is called "Zypern" by Germans and there are a lot more copper related names for the place. Closer to my home, what I call London is Londres in France and London in German. The city in question was named by a bunch of what would become Italians (Romans) - Londinium was named by a murderous bunch…

> I have some sympathy for Brazil getting pissed off about Amazon (the company) too. I never met a Brazilian that cares about it tho. There was a big national uproar a few decades ago when some Japanese company tried to patent the use of the Açaí fruit and trademark. now about America and Americans. South Americans and North Americans are as much "Americans" as Northern and Southern Europeans are Europeans. Calling t…

Americans don’t refer, in English, to the inhabitants of countries south of them as “latinos.” You are simply incorrect on this.

Among Spanish speakers the word is used, but it is a cultural not geographic term. There are ISA and Canadian Latinos too.

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#79

Post by adastra22 »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #45
meiraleal wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have some sympathy for Brazil getting pissed off about Amazon (the company) too. I never met a Brazilian that cares about it tho. There was a big national uproar a few decades ago when some Japanese company tried to patent the use of the Açaí fruit and trademark. now about America and Americans. South Americans and North Americans are as much "Americans" as Northern and Southern Europeans are Europeans. Calling t…

Interestingly, there’s a word in Spanish for people from the USA that’s “Estadounidense”, literally “Unitedstatian” which is widely used (at least in Spain) I find it a fascinating word and a way of precisely naming to keep the “American” word to be more broadly applicable, at least in theory

It is both less specific (there are many countries named “United States of …”) and unpronounceable in English.

Re: The Naming of America (2023)

#80

Post by adastra22 »

jolmg wrote: post #7
alehlopeh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the bottom of the article it says “An early version of this essay appeared in The American Voice (1988) and a section in Encounters (1991).”

I think they know, but the problem is that they wouldn't be able to cite 2001 in 1991/1988.

It’s an encyclopedia entry. It’s continuously updated, like Wikipedia. But the bulk of the text would have been from 1991/1988.
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