Lindsey Graham’s Generic American Part of Larger Problem

Lindsey Graham remains crystal clear when it comes to so-called “anchor babies:” Children of illegal aliens should not be “American.”

“People come here to have babies,” the South Carolina Republican told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren this week. “They come here to drop a child. It’s called ‘drop and leave.’ …They cross the border, they go to the emergency room, have a child, and that child’s automatically an American citizen. That shouldn’t be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons.”

Hoping to curtail baby-minded migration, Graham wants to pass a constitutional amendment that will strip the newborn of any “American” identity. His proposal’s wild, sure, but I’m more concerned by his usage of “American,” which perpetuates a politically malignant misnomer.

United States citizens have a habit of thinking “we’re number one,” an idea best encapsulated in the term “American Exceptionalism.” We’re predestined to be special, from sea to shining sea, and coast to coast. There’s good reason for this belief: the U.S. was, after all, the vanguard for representative democracy. “The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one,” Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his 1851 dissection, Democracy in America.

Ever since Tocqueville’s astute observation, the term “American Exceptionalism” has been bandied about by everyone from G. Gordon Liddy to Barack Obama, and one journalist recently used the term while discussing LeBron James’ recent career move. “In his own way, James is an example of American exceptionalism. As a remarkable athlete, he was able to fulfill the terms of his recently expired contract and then, as a free agent, make ‘The Decision,’” David Manuta opined. “This is just the latest example of what I refer to as ‘The Only in America Phenomenon.’”

This self-proclaimed “American Exceptionalism” has become as our guiding force, a guardian angel guaranteeing the States and its inhabitants the top slot in the international game of greatness. And this belief often manifests itself as a sense of entitlement. We take what we want.

Call it colonialism, call it imperialism; I’d rather call it patriotic narcissism. We are, after all, the world’s only remaining empire, and therefore reserve the right to claim anything and everything we see fit, including the generic “American,” to which we truly don’t have a right.

There’s much debate in the historic and linguistic worlds over the term “America’s” origins. While a few scholars attribute the term to English explorer Richard Amerike, who surveyed the New World in 1497, most point to an Italian man called “Amerigo Vespucci,”a pioneer sent by Portugal to map South America in 1503. The documents he sent back of the sprawling New World were a sensation, and helped spark the “American” revolution.

Many believe that Amerigo was actually named Alberigo, and adopted the Americanized moniker on honor of Nicaragua’s Amerrique Mountains. Italian through-and-through, Vespucci signed his official documents in Latin, giving him yet another handle: “Americus Vespucius.” And it was that name that German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller feminized when he created the 1507 Universalis Cosmographia, the first map to include a region called “America,” named in honor of Vespucci.

Through the haze of history, we see “America” is actually quite international: coined by a German, based on the name of an Italian under Portuguese, and later Spanish, employ who was enamored by a Nicaraguan mountain range. Of course that’s not how the word has been employed. Though “the Americas” were a loose term for the New World, the United States took the word as its own, and our nation’s dominance helped spread our presumed ownership around the world.

To use “American” and “United States citizen” interchangeably, as Graham does, strips people in Mexico, Canada, South and Central America, and all Latins, of their “American” citizenship. Or, conversely, it unwilling attributes “U.S. citizenship” to all Americans.

So, what can be done to bring conversational peace? Unfortunately, probably not too much. Unless we can spread the more idiomatic “Amurican” as far and wide as we’ve spread “American,” the “A-word” will remain squarely in the United States’ linguistic territory. Lucky you, Senator Graham: now you can go on spreading your anti-immigrant message in a language everyone understands.

Image via Gueorgui Tcherednitchenko’s Flickr.