It has happened. Some Native Americans arrived in Ireland last week to pass clockwise through the ancient pre-Christian sites of Ireland, and the term Native American was used in newspapers without irony or inverted commas. Had they been WASP Americans they would not have even been mentioned. Because they inhabit a territory in our political brains reserved for special species, not merely do they get publicity and official receptions, they are also treated with a special and, I might add, condescending regard.
Oh, look! Injuns.
Except of course, they are not Indians any more. That term is no longer permitted about people descended from the aboriginal inhabitants of the Americas, though it is harmless enough. It might not be strictly accurate, but so what? Few names are etymologically entirely satisfactory.
Land of the Foreigners
Wales is an English word for the Cymric landmass and it simply means Land of the (barbarous) Foreigners. It is etymologically the same word as Gaul, which is what the Romans contemptuously called the aboriginal inhabitants of France. It was what the Irish called the people who settled in a fort in what we call Donegal - fort of the foreigners, Dun na nGall. The same word lies at the heart of the name for French speakers of Belgium, the Walloons, and of the Romanian province of Wallachia.
All of these names were intended to be insulting when they were given by outsiders; what would we do if the Walloons of Belgium or the Wallachs of Romania or the Welsh of Wales decided that they no longer wished to be known in English by those names, but preferred to be known by new and more politically correct titles? Would we say, certainly, Native French Speakers of Belgium, and most willingly, Aboriginal Celts of the Cymric Fringe, and so on, or would we yell, for God's sake give my head peace! - and then head off for a soothing pint?
The name Indian was not given to the many peoples of the Americas in any sense of insult. It was plain ignorance. Those people have been joined on that continent by others who are just as native now as those who preceded them. It requires a particular linguistic cowardice (or linguistic ignorance or linguistic bigotry) to pretend that the only Americans who may be called native are those descended from the pre-Columbian Mongol tribes of North and South America.
It is more than cowardice. It is racist, and racist in a way which would get the right-on users of the term "native" itchy indeed if it were used about un-politically correct species, such as the English. What would be the response of Dublin Corporation officials at the Mansion House if a group of Native English, i.e., Anglo-Saxons, decided to tour the mesolithic and neolithic religious sites of Ireland in a clockwise direction? What if Jean Marie Le Penn arrived with a dance-troupe of Native French people?
And mayhap a few Native Herrenvolk as well?
Politically correct Like it? No, I didn't think you would. It's all right; I understand the difference - just about. But the term Native American is being used simply because the term Indian has fallen out of politically correct favour. So why should the name of the dead, white, European male Amerigo Vespucci be an appropriate term to use for these visitors? Surely the very word "American" is offensive: it is patriarchal, sexist, imperialist.
All this would not be a problem if we spoke any language but English, which actually means: American. But we live beneath the board of the Great American Social Banquet, from which we take whatever cultural, linguistic and political crumbs are dropped our way, regardless of the vast differences between the two societies. Thus, without a debate of any kind, we imported the absurd term Ms, which has improved nothing whatsoever: instead of having two titles for women, or the single one which was intended by American feminists to replace those two, now we have three.
The upshot has been that the inoffensive term "Miss" now comes in third place, Mrs is in second place and Ms is - I suspect largely because of media imposition - the clear leader. The matter was not discussed at any rational level. There was a linguistic coup, much as there has been on the issue of "Native Americans", and suddenly women were to be called by the title Ms.
But not always. Ms O'Rourke is sometimes Mrs O'Rourke. Ms Geoghegan-Quinn is occasionally Mrs Geoghegan-Quinn. It all depends on the mood and the political opinions of the writer. This is not simple communication; it is classically agenda-driven linguistic politics of a particularly American variety.
American language politics
The Germans and the French, with their easy habits of frau and fraulein, madame and madamoiselle, continue untroubled by American language politics; meanwhile, we, with brainless mimicry, ape the American way, without even thinking whether (a) whether we really needed deliberate linguistic engineering to reflect the changing balance of sexual politics; and (b) if absolutely necessary, whether or not we could devise terminologies of our own.
We did not think. We did not think about the term Native American. We did not think about African-American when it replaced Black American, or Black American when it replaced Coloured, or Coloured when it replaced Negro. Politically correct language-tampering is done to suit whatever modish whim infects cliques of influence, and those cliques are invariably American in inspiration if not in reality. One such clique will no doubt soon dispose of Native American; maybe even - heaven speed the day - the prissy vileness that is Ms. One thing is pretty certain - we will do precisely as PC America bids us.