| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 188
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Amerasian
| | Amerasian is not a synonym for Asian American. An Amerasian is a person of mixed Asian and American parentage, especially the child of an Asian mother and an American father. The term, which dates to the Korean War in the early 1950s, came into wider use during the Vietnam War, when the prolonged presence of American servicemen in South Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries resulted in an increased number of such children. Since American servicemen are of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds, there is no fixed racial connotation to Amerasian apart from a supposition that one parent, generally the mother, is an ethnic Asian. | 1 |
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Asian American and
Eurasian. | 2 |
American Indian
| | For those who are convinced that Indian is inherently offensive, the compound American Indian may seem just as unacceptable, but for others the term offers a useful alternative where Native American might seem too formal or anachronistic and Indian alone either too casual or ambiguous. In principle, American Indian can apply to all native peoples throughout the Americas except the Eskimos and Aleuts, but in practice it is generally restricted to the peoples of the United States and Canada. For native peoples of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America, Indian or the less frequent Amerindian are better choices: the Indian civilizations of Mexico and Peru, the Amerindians of the Guyana highlands. | 3 |
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Indian and
Native American. | 4 |
Amerindian
| | The contractions Amerindian and Amerind occur infrequently in modern American English and are likely to sound stilted or old-fashioned when used in referring to contemporary Native Americans. They are somewhat more common in anthropological contexts or when used of South American cultures. | 5 |
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American Indian,
Indian, and
Native American. | 6 |
Anglo
| | Anglo is used in the United States primarily in distinguishing a white English-speaking person from a person of Hispanic heritage. This usage originated in the Southwest, where historical patterns of settlement resulted in three distinct, relatively stable cultural groups: Native American, Hispanic, and most recently Anglo (short for Anglo-American). While Anglo is used exclusively of whites, it is not strictly limited in this context to persons of English ancestry—German Americans, Polish Americans, Irish Americans, and others can all be viewed as Anglos so long as their primary language is English. Outside of the Southwest and southern California, however, Anglo is less widely used as a general label for non-Hispanic whites. In areas where there is no large Hispanic population to be measured against or where ethnic distinctions among various European groups remain strong, Anglo is less commonly used as a catchall term. | 7 |
| Anglo is also used in non-Hispanic contexts. In Canada, where its usage dates at least to 1800, the distinction is between persons of English and French descent. And in American historical contexts Anglo is apt to be used | 8 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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