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Colorado State: Don’t Use the Word ‘America’ Because It’s Not ‘Inclusive’
 [NATIONALREVIEW] Colorado State University’s Inclusive Language Guide instructs students "to avoid" using the words "America" and "American," because doing so "erases other cultures."Better to call ourselves Unitedstatesians or perhaps merely Imperialists. "The Americas encompass a lot more than the United States," the guide states. "There is South America, Central America, Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean just to name a few of 42 countries in total." I blame it on de Tocqueville. "Democracy in America" didn't address the striving masses of Peru. "That’s why the word ’americano’ in Spanish can refer to anything on the American continent. Yet, when we talk about ’Americans’ in the United States, we’re usually just referring to people from the United States. This erases other cultures and depicts the United States as the dominant American country." Where do we Unitedstatesians get off referring to Canadians, and Mexicans, and Guatamalans? The guide advises students to use the words "U.S. citizen" or "person from the U.S." instead of "American." And they shouldn't use the word "Coloradan," either. What if somebody's from Wyoming? From Utah? If he's from Manitoba his/her/its head will explode. Some of the other words and phrases deemed not inclusive by the guide include the words "male" and "female" (because this "refers to biological sex and not gender," and "we very rarely need to identify or know a person’s biological sex and more often are referring to gender"), "Gender" relies on dress, hair, and self-identification, rather than on characteristics of the pee-pee, which is considered irrelevant, whether on display or not, as it is with distressing frequency... "cake walk" (because it apparently has origins in "the racism of 19th century minstrel shows"), It was a silly dance, performed internationally by whites as well. If black people ever discover the Chicken Dance nobody in Europe will ever be able to get married again. You should also be careful about using a jig saw or having a fling. Never, ever, under any circumstances, eat Eskimo Pie. "freshman" (because it "excludes women and non-binary gender identities"), Use "fresh people." "Hispanic" ("because of its origins in colonialization and the implication that to be Hispanic or Latinx/Latine/Latino, one needs to be Spanish-speaking"), Yet somehow they're always brown. Go figure. And no goddamned sombreros! Ever! "hold down the fort" (because "the U.S. the historical connotation refers to guarding against Native American ’intruders’ and feeds into the stereotype of ’savages’"), No fort, you know, ever actually needed held down against Apaches or Commanches or Sioux, not even against Croatans or Mingos or Powhattans. Nope. Never. Bernard Cornwell wrote a novel called The Fort in which the Brits were holding the fort (pardon my English!) against the "no can do" (because it was "[o]riginally a way to mock Chinese people"), "So long" is forbidden, too. It comes from Malay "Salang," which is the local form of "Salaam," which is cognate with "Shalom," which is Hebrew, thus Zionist. I heard "no can do" lots of times in Vietnam. Sometimes I still say "ching ching" when something is true; I got that in Thailand. And I occasionally even say "same-o same-o (onaji desu)" in the same context younger folk use "same-old same-old." But I'm a polyglot, so my poor old head's swimming with interesting phrasing. "peanut gallery" (because it "names a section in theaters, usually the cheapest and worst, where many Black people sat during the era of Vaudeville”), Vaudeville? How about the kiddie gallery on the Howdy Doody Show? “straight” (because it “implies that anyone LGBT is ‘crooked’ or not normal”), Or if you're military, it means that your pants are creased, your bunk made, your gig line straight, and your brass polished. How militaristic. “food coma” (because it “directly alludes to the stereotype of laziness associated with African-Americans”), Never heard the term. Sounds like an overdose of carbohydrates, doesn't it? and “war” or “battle,” when used any way other than to describe a literal war or battle (because “they evoke very real tragedy that can be problematic for survivors of war or Veterans”). For instance a War on Language? Thought shapes action. Language shapes thought. Posted by: Fred 2019-07-25 |
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