752
Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel
(www.aljazeera.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
752 points (96.8% liked)
Technology
59312 readers
5261 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
If you want something to justify yourself about for life, I have one:
"America is a continent with plenty of different countries, why do you people from the USA call yourselves 'American' like you owned the whole continent?"
The use of "American" to designate residents of the United States dates back to a time when there were no other countries on the continent. If you lived on the American continent in the 1700s, you were either Indian, or an English, French, or Spanish colonist (or a slave). In the 1770s, 13 of these colonies rebelled and formed their own union. It wasn't really a country though, since each had its own money, laws, and government. To differentiate them from colonial citizens, Europeans called them Americans. Most Americans thought of themselves as citizens of their state (Virginians, New Yorkers, etc.), and in fact it wasn't until after the Civil War that they began referring to the United States as a singular entity, rather than a plural.
Your description of America as a single continent with "plenty of different countries" betrays a very Afro-Eurasia-centric view of the western hemisphere. Unless you can point out Wisonson on a map, or tell me what the Federal Republic of Central America was, maybe keep your eastern hemisphere judgements to yourself.
And therefore, lies my point: you will find a lot of people whom you'll have to copy&paste that justification for. For life. 😉
Bonus: also beware of referring to the USA as "the United States", less you bring forth the wrath of someone from the "Mexican United States".
I've worked with folks from around the world (including Central and South Americans), some can be touchy about it. Had to tell them "sorry, I, as an American, don't define these terms. Blame Europeans, not me".
"US", "America", "Americans" all have specific denotations... per EMEA, and hell, even Canadians.
It's like nicknames - if you have one, you didn't choose it. It was earned or applied by someone else.
Yeah... I learned Spanish in Mexico as a wee lad, the folk living North of there were called "Gringos" or "Yankees". Back in Europe, behind the iron curtain, it was "Americaniard" or "Yank", rarely "American"... even when people meant no disrespect.
Then in Spain... (@PRUSSIA_x86@lemmy.world, you may want to see this)... "American" refers to any citizen of the whole continent... even the official dictionary itself, in it's latest update, actually states:
https://www.rae.es/dpd/Estados%20Unidos
So yeah, kind of like nicknames... but then some places have different rules about the nicknames. 😉
(...and then there are the actually vulgar despective nicknames, which I won't get into here)
Oh that's cool to hear about. Neat!