Maggie's Farm

bgarrett ... As usual, the politically correct are macerating the English language. Every other Western country describes their 'born there' citizens as "native" -- 'native German' 'native French,' 'native Polish' etc. And in no case does that refer to the color of their skin, just their birth origin. Only the Busybodies in our country torture the language to select out a special group on the basis of skin color.
Carleton Coon, the great anthropologist , in his seminal work, The Races of the World, describes whites as Caucasian, Negroes as Negroes, American Indians as American Indian or Amerind. In those days, back in the 1950s, nobody feared not being special enough to have their own designation. Nowadays, in the liberals' struggle to become more diverse, American Indians are referred to as 'Native Americans'.
Where, pray, does that leave us, the Americans who are also 'native' because we were born here, along with our ancestors, sometimes for many generations? The Busybodies don't care. Only those of us who revere our language and our unique history care. Black Americans feel deadly insulted if their ethnic group is referred to as Negro, even though this is anthropologically correct. During the 1960s, they insisted that they be referred to as 'black' . But that became too simple, and they decided to be insulted about it. So they began to call themselves 'African Americans,' even if they and their parents had never been to Africa. Now, it has become a deadly insult to refer to one of our darker brethren as a Negro. Back in the 1960s I once interviewed John Johnson, the founder and publisher of Ebony magazine and Negro Digest, and asked him why there was this confusion about their group label. He smiled at me and said, "Well, I guess they can't pronounce the word Negro."
So we are left with this verbal problem. I'm still wondering what they would call native Kenyans who have not a drop of Negro blood. There are some folks from Kenya whose families have been there as citizens for two hundred years, and they are Caucasian. If they emigrated to America they could be called African American. Strange isn't it?
I consider this the major problem with using geography to designate race. It leads you into strange byways.

Marianne