The posting by Wiggum asking ‘What is an African American?’ made me wonder, why aren’t White people in America called Euro-Americans?
Black people in America are called African-Americans.
Asian people in America are called Asian-Americans.
Indian people in America are called Native-Americans.
However, Hispanic people in America are usually just called Hispanic, or Latino, but not Hispanic-Americans. Likewise, White people in America are still just called Whites or Caucasians but not Euro-Americans. Why the differences?
Part of the reason for that (I’m not going to claim it’s the whole reason) is that for a long period of its history American culture was dominated by descendants of western European cultures from Germany, England, Ireland, France, and other countries whose inhabitants have a similar skin colouration.
So in articles, novels, etc…, when the word American was used, the person represented was assumed to be caucasian. If you read a novel and one of the protagonists was black, it would be explicitly stated that the individual was a different race since otherwise you would assume that the person was white. Ditto in a newspaper article.
So other terms became commonly used to describe people that didn’t fit the american “norm”. As time went on, some of the names acquired negative connotations (e.g. nigger) and so people have tried to find new names without those connotations.
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry
I tend to think that if you consider yourself an American, then just drop the hyphenation. My ancestors came from elsewhere, but I am born and raised right in this country. I can understand people having recently moved here or using dual citizenship identifying with both the old and new homelands, but at some point I would think it would be easier to just be an American.
Well, shut my mouth. It’s also illegal to put squirrels down your pants for the purposes of gambling.
CheeseHead: White people in America are still just called Whites or Caucasians but not Euro-Americans. Why the differences?
I think the term your looking for might be European-Americans? (Afro/Euro; African/European.)
Nowadays, white people originate almost anywhere, since they colonized much of the world. For example, I’m white as can be, but my grandparents were from Irkutsk, Russia, which is in Asia, almost dead-center. But I’m not Asian-American, and to call me European is stretching it too many generations. (Just like African-American is overused now.)
Also, if someone was a white from South Africa and emigrated to the US, are they African-Americans?
Listen to any speech by Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or the like. They’ll refer to blacks as African-Americans, but whites are “whites”. Double standard.
Just call us all “Americans” and get rid of the hyphenated crap.
Those appelations aren’t as commonly used as the ones mentioned in the OP. In any event, I imagine expressions like “Italian American” or “Polish American” came from the fact that these were fairly large groups, but not fitting into the early, “traditional” view of what was american, i.e.
someone who’s been here for many generations and/or descended from a family with english or german ancestry.
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry