Humans are inherently lazy. Mentally we like to use terms to identify groups even if the term is technically inaccurate. Now, I admit that my career has included 25+ years of detailed technical writing, so I tend to pick out discrepancies in the use of words and view language with a technical lens. We seem to need to put labels on groups and subgroups just to quickly categorize and file away information in our brain without taking the time to get down into the weeds. It's funny, because we often don’t put ourselves into such groups, but we think nothing of doing it to other people. In the words of Anthony Michael Hall’s character, Brian, at the end of The Breakfast Club, “You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, with the most convenient definitions.”
Yankee Doodle Dandy
While in England I was occasionally called a Yank because I’m an American (we’ll get to that term in a bit). Yet, people native to southern US states feel that Yankees are northerners. The term Yankee Doodle Dandy was aimed at residents of the thirteen original colonies just prior to the US Revolution. Today, Yankee isn’t considered a negative. Many people in the US know the words to the song, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” which was created by commandeering a common drinking song of the time and putting new words to it. Something that humans have done for ages. Lil ole' church ladies are absolutely mortified when I start talking about their favorite church hymns having been created in the same manner, changing words to tavern songs to give them a place in church on Sunday.
But what is a Yankee Doodle Dandy? Well, if we look at slang being used in the mid 1700’s we quickly discover that Yankee was NOT intended to be a compliment, nor a term of endearment. A dandy was a well-dressed young man, or a happy boy. A doodle is the penis of a boy, or a small penis on a man. A Yankee is a masturbator, or someone who likes to masturbate. Put them all together and the literal translation means, “Someone who is happy to masturbate their little penis.” I often wonder if the Steinbrenner’s know their professional baseball team has a dual meaning (The New York Masturbators). Given that it is the most financially valuable sports franchise on earth, I’m sure they don’t really care. Plus, it can be lesson about how the target audience of a term can take an intended negative and embrace it, own it, and change it to a positive and over time the original definition is lost to time and the evolution of the language.
Using Continents to Identify People
Asia is the largest and most populated continent on the earth and includes over fifty countries being either wholly, or partly, on its land mass. Some of these countries include China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. If we created a line-up of native residents of just those four countries, would they all visibly look the same? Nope. But people think nothing of saying “Asian” and ONLY meaning the people from countries in the south-eastern portion of the continent. What, nobody else is important enough to be included? Plus, if you asked an individual to self-identify, most of them are going to say their nationality, such as Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc., not “Asian.”
Africa has less population, but a similar number of countries, and African has the same label issue as Asian. People from all those countries do not all look the same. A client of mine is passionate about educating people in the US regarding diversity and inclusion within various groups, whether that be in business, communities, religious groups, etc. It is a very respectable and important endeavor. As she travels around the United States speaking to groups and teaching classes, she often has to feel out the target audience as to whether to use the term “African American” or “Black.” Some people like to feel tied to their African origins, while some feel that their ancestors have been in the US so long that they feel no connection to Africa outside of their genetics. Toss in the idea that most Americans are mutts, and it really gets convoluted.
The ancestors of my father are English, Scottish, and native American. My mother’s side are pretty evenly split between Swedish and Chippewa Indian. The US is sometimes called the great melting pot because within a few generations of coming to the US nearly none of the offspring are “pure bred” anything, we are mostly mutts. Another thing to think about is this; according to anthropologists, homo sapiens (modern humans) first appeared in Africa 300,000 years ago. Our modern brain was in place 100,000 years ago when the earliest homo sapiens left Africa to populate the earth. So, doesn’t that make ALL of us Africans?
I love the standup comedy of Josh Blue and he takes full advantage of this technical disconnect to use it as a running joke in his routine. Although “white” he was born in Africa and after his parents finished up their stint in the Peace Corps and moved back to the US, he was an American, so he self-identifies as a “white African American.” The way he incorporates this into his comedy is genius and unique to him and his experiences in life.
American
Umm, you understand that the entire Western Hemisphere of the earth is “America,” right? There is the north American continent and the south American continent. Named after Amerigo Vespucci who spent a good deal of time creating some of the earliest maps of the area. The word “of” in the English language is used to denote a portion or a subgroup of a larger whole. Thus, “The United States of America” therefore means a specific country within America. Yet, my passport says American. When people say they are going to America they mean the USA. Again, like the word Asian, I have to ask, is nobody else important enough to be included? Every country in north and south America is technically part of America and in my mind is an American.
Latino
Often when someone says they are Latino I ask them how much Latin they can speak. The quick witted often say something in pig-Latin and I bow to their cleverness. The term is actually fairly new. Whenever an empire takes over a large swath of land it spreads its influence from one end to the other. So, it should be no surprise that the Latin language has influenced many languages that were once part of the Roman Empire. This includes all of the “romance” languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, and the numerous Slavic dialects, just to name a few.
The intent of the term was meant to identify people living in the area around central America that were non-English and non-German speaking Europeans since this area was heavily colonized by Spain, Portugal, and France. Evidently, the only common denominator that people could think of at the time was that Latin had influenced those languages a thousand years prior. Really? That’s the best that we could come up with. That would be fine if the term was "Latino American", but when it is just Latino, it brings into question all the other languages influenced by Latin but whose people did not colonize the America's. Because today, just 70 years after the term was first used, people that are ignorant of the meaning often apply it to people of a certain look regardless of where they actually come from. Just another one of those things that may amuse only me and leave me shaking my head.
