Graphic by Joaquín Kunkel / The Gazelle
Response: On the Policy of Using U.S. America
ITHACA, U.S.A. — I grew up attending a small Catholic school in Colombia, where national anthems and patriotic songs were as common as hymns and ...
Apr 16, 2016
ITHACA, U.S.A. — I grew up attending a small Catholic school in Colombia, where national anthems and patriotic songs were as common as hymns and prayers. One of the songs I most clearly remember is América. Nino Bravo’s voice would blare from the radio of the small van we’d take back from school in the afternoons, reminding us that America was the sacred garden that God had used as a template for Eden. I wasn’t much for patriotism so I’d usually sing along absentmindedly, waiting to get home so I could watch TV: “Today I found a place, for both of us in that new land: América!”
I spent those sunny American days plopped on the couch browsing cartoons like Pinky y Cerebro, Batman y Robin and Los Simpsons. American commercials punctuated all my American media, inviting me to buy products I couldn’t purchase, space camps I couldn’t apply to and contests I wasn’t eligible to participate in. Drinking Coca Cola on my couch, I was slowly and unpleasantly taught that the tilde in America was more of an asterisk: America* — some conditions may apply.
After reading Letter to the Editor: On the Policy of U.S. American on The Gazelle two weeks ago, my friends from the community shared their stories with me about their first encounter with the term American in the exclusive sense. Some grew up knowing American was a term that applied exclusively to the United States while others had it emblazoned over the entrance to their schools, only being told it was not their word when they left to study abroad. Arguing that not enough non-U.S. persons identify as American to be worth discussing is at best petty.
Let’s get something straight: no one is asking citizens of the United States to think differently of themselves. No one is asking them to live the U.S. American Dream or be U.S. American Idiots. The core of the conversation about terms like U.S. American is about how we operate around a shared label that can be easily turned exclusive by cultural hegemony. The argument, for the sake of convenient numbered lists, is as follows.
- U.S. citizens are not the only group to use the term American.
- Being denied this label is hurtful.
- We generally like doing less hurtful things.
The counter argument to these points tends to be filled with crappy strawmen and false dichotomies so let’s clarify some points in regards to each, and please accept my apologies in advance for any strawmen I create myself along the way.
1. U.S. citizens are not the only group to use the term American.
I can present my personal case above as a very reasonable instance of people identifying with the term American outside of the United States. As you can tell, I grew up hearing the term refer to the unified continent as a whole, barely ever even drawing the distinction of America as North, South and Central. With the ubiquity of U.S. shows, even ideas like the American Dream were naïvely taken by me as being continental concepts. Sure, you can fault my younger self for not being informed about the source of all the media he consumed, but can you really say other people don’t identify with the term?2. Being denied this label is hurtful.
Not everyone is familiar with South American history, but it’s safe to say most people know the Latin Subcontinent has been exploited heavily by the United States. From U.S. industries like the United Fruit Company driving the massacre of workers in Colombia to U.S. intelligence toppling leftist governments when convenient, there’s a laundry list of abuse exported from the United States. The message of supremacy over our sovereign lands has been written in blood and internal memos. Don’t be fooled into thinking I’m making an argument about reparations or whether countries should or should not act in their own self-interest at the cost of other nations. All I’m laying out is the relationship of seizure between the U.S. and the rest of the Americas. What the U.S. has wanted, it has taken — be it governments or natural resources. To add the very words we use to identify ourselves to the list of what has been taken is, inarguably, painful.“But,” chirps up my poorly constructed strawman, making sure I have a segue into the subtleties of this argument, “aren’t you telling U.S. citizens what they are allowed to identify themselves as, and in doing so, hurting them?”
No. Citizens of the United States are more than welcome to use the word American in the continental sense. They are part of this great garden, part of our American Brotherhood™. Hell, I don’t even consider it my place to tell them to stop using the term exclusively, if that’s their preference. The idea behind the subversion of the term is not to force a change in speech or writing on anybody, but rather to draw attention to a point of pain, under the assumption that…
3. We generally like doing less hurtful things.
Or rather, we also like doing nice things. I’m not trying to tell people what they should or shouldn’t do. Dating a philosopher, I’ve had enough arguments about morality to know I need a refresher on ethics. The best I can do is lay out as much information as possible about the argument being made for using the term U.S. American — that is, by subverting the ownership of a shared label, you can acknowledge privilege in a small way to others. It’s not that you’re a bad person if you say American, you don’t owe anybody your language or identity, but it sure would be nice if we had fewer articles on so-called microaggressions and more articles on micro-nods-of-understanding-and-discreet-fistbumps-through-subtle-subversions-of-hegemonic-structures.Maybe you feel like you fill some space in between. You personally have never denied anyone the label American and agree that no one should. I’m glad you exist, I’m glad you share these opinions with me, but that is sadly not the case across the board. It's not the use of the word American that it is hurtful but the denial of the shared term, and that denial does take place by others and can be acknowledged by the use of U.S. American. When I hear someone use the term U.S. American, I hear someone saying, “I recognize that when it comes to overloaded words, my culture will sadly trump yours — so let’s let that space be.” It's a rare acknowledgement of privilege that I very much appreciate.
As far as The Gazelle’s policy on using the term U.S. American goes, I’d tend to go for the practical programmer solution: Set U.S. American as the default, unless the author has an issue with its usage. And have a drink on me when they don’t.
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