Paying Reparations to Myself
Jun 27th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 2 Comments |
I was thinking, that while I’m paying reparations to myself as a Native American (since I’m a native American), I should probably also pay reparations to myself as a Scot, given the horrible way my people (the Anglo-Saxons) treated my people (the Scots).
Fair’s fair.
I’m curious about the capital “N” in the first “Native American” and the lower case “n” in the second.
I’d like to say upfront that I totally respect people’s right to determine what they’re called (e.g. black, African-American, Afro-American, etc.) however, it we start to put what get’s capitalized in the game you’re creating whole new universes of confusion.
;)
I’m “enough” Cherokee to be recognized as a “Native American” by the Feds. (Never bothered to get them to recognize me, but there it is.) Hence the capital “N.”
In addition, I was born in America. I am a native, as is everyone else who was born here. Hence the lowercase “n.”
Some in Congress seem to think that people in the latter category today owe people in the former category today an apology for things people in the latter category back in the day did to people in the former category back in the day. (See the previous post on this issue.)
The very idea that there is a difference between the categories if the only difference between the names is capitalization is ludicrous, in my opinion, besides the fact that some of us fall into both categories.