Politically Incorrect

Despite the replacement of certain words and expressions in literature by politically correct ones in recent times, one aspect stands out. That is, not all euphemisms are politically correct as they may seem. It wouldn’t be entirely incorrect if someone alleged that the so called experts who coined these euphemisms did it by taking liberties on what they felt right or wrong. In a non sectarian point of view, ‘American’ is the term one would generally use to refer to a citizen of the United States of America. However, in a separatist mindset, an American citizen who is black in color is quite euphemistically referred to as 'African-American'. This is in sharp contrast to the reference to a white citizen as simply 'Caucasian', which logically should have been 'European-American'.

What those wordsmiths forgot, for their own convenience, was that all the so called heroic conquests on the American continents by European settlers during the past centuries notwithstanding, the fact remains unchanged. The original inhabitants of these continents are the ones whom the settlers had comfortably termed the Red Indians. But generally the term 'American' suggests a descendant of the settlers and not that of the natives. Like many other nations which are direct remnants of colonialism, the United States of America is an amalgam of settlers, natives, slaves and immigrants. If it’s logical to connotate the newer generations of all those except that of the settlers with their ancestry then it must hold true for them as well. Otherwise, this supposedly euphemistic nomenclature succeeds not in unifying the various factions of the country, but in segregating the rest from those with European descent.