Stanford University has demanded that citizens of the United States should not be referred to as “Americans,” deeming it harmful and racist language use.
In May, Stanford published an index of offensive words, as part of their “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative,” which they described as a “multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford.”
“The goal of the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative is to eliminate* many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased (e.g., disability bias, ethnic bias, ethnic slurs, gender bias, implicit bias, sexual bias) language in Stanford websites and code,” the university wrote on its website.
Terms such as “insane” and “crazy” should be avoided for being ableist. You shouldn’t “bury the hatchet” in an argument, as this is cultural appropriation of Native Americans. An outcast can’t be a “black sheep,” or be “blacklisted,” as this gives negative connotations to “black.”
If you accomplish two things at once, you haven’t “killed two birds with one stone,” as this normalises violence against animals. “Hip hip hooray” is also banned as a celebration, with Stanford declaring that “this term was used by German citizens during the Holocaust as a rallying cry when they would hunt down Jewish citizens,” despite the term being centuries older.
Under the section of “imprecise language,” Stanford declared that citizens of the USA should not be called “Americans,” but “US Citizens,” as “this term often refers to people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas (which is actually made up of 42 countries).”
For sheer silliness, this "guide" is hard to beat. https://t.co/Kw6jjpWOyw
— Brit Hume (@brithume) December 20, 2022
Following initial discovery of the index of words on Monday, Stanford attempted to cover up the list from public view, by requiring users to login to view it in its entirety.
The debate on the term “Americans” seems to arise from a linguistical conflict between English and Spanish speakers, and not from a desire to imply that the USA is “the most important country in the Americas,” as Stanford claims.
When English speakers say “America,” they are shortening the full name of the country, the United States of America, but in Spanish, the term refers to both continents of North and South America, which in Spanish, is viewed as one continent.
Spanish speakers refer to the USA as “los Estados Unidos,” dropping the term “America.” Ironically, the official Spanish name for Mexico is “los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” literally, “the United Mexican States.”
In terms of the denonym, the name of inhabitants of the USA, the English option can only logically be “American.” The Spanish denonym “estadounidense” is used for Americans, which literally translates to “United Statesian,” a much clumsier name in English.
The term “Americano” does exist in Spanish, but has a completely different meaning, and refers to any citizens of countries in the continent of “America,” with Spanish speakers of South American countries commonly referring to themselves as “Americanos.” This is the root of the problem, as there is no singular equivalent translation in English, despite seeming to map onto “American.”
Other languages, such as German, use “America” to refer both to the USA and the continent, leading some Europeans to call American citizens “US-Americans” to avoid ambiguity.
Educational YouTube WonderWhy recommended that people should “respect the language you’re speaking” in order to avoid confusion, instead of applying the Stanford method of demanding that one language use be changed to fit the other.
