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America and American are offensive.
This is not my view. But an early version of a document compiled by the “Inclusive Communications Task Force at Colorado State University” actually singled out the words “America” and “American” as being potentially offensive. Here is the actual language used in the draft:
“The Americas encompass a lot more than the United States. There is South America, Central America, Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean just to name a few of 42 countries in total. 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.”
The conclusion in that draft was to replace “America” and “American” with “U.S. citizen” or “person from the U.S.”