Also offensive: pointing out that English speakers do not use the word “American” to refer to people from Latin America. The term in our language is universally used to refer to people from the country America.
Also offensive: pointing out that English speakers do not use the word “American” to refer to people from Latin America. The term in our language is universally used to refer to people from the country America.
Eh, it is what it is.
ML is pretty well known for mods either power tripping, or at least pushing the boundaries to the edge.
This one could go either way.
Technically the comment was a rule violation, so removing the comment isn’t totally power tripping.
The problem is that your comment was the least political in the whole damn thread. Like, even my comment was a tad more political than yours, depending on how you look at it. And even that was way less than dessalines’ tangent.
The entire post was about language and word usage, and your comment definitely was not political, nor was it in any way rude or insulting.
I’m still really surprised your comment got reported/removed, but mine didn’t. It was confusing as hell when I came back after a response and saw yours gone.
So, yeah, definitely PTB. If they’d nuked everyone, I could see it being clueless mods, but targeting yours just means they got a report and wiped it, so that’s dumber than dammit, even if it wasn’t a literal power trip
I actually wanted to reach out to the mods and ask what’s up before posting this. But Lemmy’s lack of a modmail feature means when I want to contact mods, I have to direct message them individually. And it looks like all the mods of that community are inactive, with the most recent one only having been active 2 months ago. So I wouldn’t even know who to reach out to.
YDI. Seems like a really dumb take. AFAIK to many folks (not from the USA) North Americans are from Canada, USA, Mexico combined with the Central and South American countries, they are collectively known as The Americas. Everyone in the Americas is American in the same sense that all Africans are African despite there being many countries. The arrogance of USAsians co-opting the name of the whole continent of The Americas as though they are the only country that matters is kind of mind boggling.
The thread was literally asking “hey, what are the right words to use to refer to people from America”. Even if my take was wrong (and I maintain in the strongest terms that it was not…see my reply to @therapyguy@lemmy.wtf) it was a respectful input to the discussion at hand. “YDI” is the dumbest of dumb takes. Contributing to a thread about a given topic with input on that topic does not deserve a ban and to have your opinion silenced.
You going on racist rants, calling spanish speakers arrogant (which you’ve done twice now), is not anything we will ever allow on lemmy.ml.
Also the absolute gall of someone calling spanish speakers arrogant, when it’s the US who’s trying their best to exclude them from a designation they call themselves.
Oh, incidentally I also reported dessaline’s comment. Like you say, they were pretty obviously behaving in an offensive manner. I figure if the mods are removing my comments (and giving me a weeklong ban!!), they had for sure better remove dessaline’s, which is far more directly offensive with its completely unfounded accusation of white supremacy and calling you illiterate.
In relation to the claims they make about America not being used prior to the 20th century…even their own article proves them wrong.
it says. Remembering that this is a thread specifically about the demonym. So the adjective has been in widespread use since at least the 19th century, despite what our fascistic friend says.
Not that the claim made in that article is exactly correct. One of my favourite books (and certainly my favourite pre-20th-century text) uses some derivation of “America” no fewer than 7 times, two of which are nouns. Not exactly an obscure text, and not one with any reason to be strongly biased in favour of America. Still, that at only serves as proof that the claim in the article is wrong by at least 1 year, so it’s not the most damning. Not as damning as the fact that the article given in evidence that “American” only exists because imperialism (never mind the bleeding obvious…America as a country, and indeed all the various other countries of the Americas, only exist because of imperialism) specifically states that “American” existed prior.
Damn, they added a ban? And a week? A one day, that’s kinda normal for a cooldown period, but a week? Damn.
And, yeah, the subject comes up from time to time, so I’ve gone looking a few times. Never bothered to keep links, and lost my copy/paste that covered quotes and citations, but there’s no lack of evidence regarding the usage I was describing.
The French in specific were pretty hung ho about accepting the US as a nation early on. They use a different term in French, etatsunidens, or something like that, but when they were using English in correspondence with us and our diplomats of the era, American and America were used for sure. Not that it matters too much, since the real point of the conversation was current usage; I only brought up the past to indicate that the subject isn’t controversial overall. But I guess I used keywords lol
I respect the work dessalines puts into lemmy as a dev, so I never get nasty with him, and in truth he’s not usually that rude himself. But he has that habit when he’s on his “home turf” of sticking to the party line no matter what, even if it’s having to hammer the square peg of it into the round hole of a conversation.
Makes me wonder what bug is up his ass tbh. Maybe it was a bad day or whatever. We’ve disagreed in the past without him stepping to a slap fight.