Colorado State University Language Guide Not a Fan of the Word “American”

Colorado State University, a public university located in Fort Collins, Colorado, recently published a language guide for its students in the name of inclusivity that listed the words “America” and “American” as non-inclusive words, among other words in the guide. The university’s Inclusive Communications Task Force compiled the guide, which is entitled “Inclusive Language Guide” and is available online at the university’s Women and Gender Collaborative website.

The purpose of the guide, like its predecessors at other state universities across the country, is to encourage people to follow their standard of tolerant and inclusive language to avoid offending people. The Colorado State guide said that the guide is supposed to help “communicators practice inclusive language and [help] everyone on [its] campus feel welcomed, respected, and valued.”

Accuracy in Academia has covered other inclusive language guides at other universities, which include:

• Bates College
• James Madison University
• Pennsylvania State University
• Princeton University
• University of Pittsburgh

For starters, the Colorado State University guide claimed that “America” and “America” are words to avoid because America should not refer solely to the United States of America. It claimed the word choice “erases other cultures and depicts the United States as the dominant American country.” To avoid the U.S.-centric bias, the guide suggested using “U.S. citizen” or “person from the U.S.”

But this is not all for the inclusive language guide. The guide discouraged the use of gender words like “male,” “female,” “straight,” “ladies and gentlemen,” and even “Mr., Mrs., Ms.” Specifically, these words only refer to biological sex, but not gender, and the guide claimed “we very rarely need to identify or know a person’s biological sex and more often are referring to gender.”

In short, inclusive language guides are an example of political correctness running amok on college campuses, all paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.

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