There are a few things I'd like to bring up, related to the article, as well as the comments on this thread. I have no hostility towards anyone either way, and I thank you all for sharing your thoughts and opinions! Here goes...

1) "America the Beautiful" is a song to express love and devotion to the USA. That qualifies it as an anthem. No, it is not the official National Anthem of the United States, but it is AN anthem of the USA. Here are some examples of songs that are considered "American Anthems" but are not the official National Anthem of the USA:

America the Beautiful
Dixie
God Bless America
My Country Tis of Thee (America)
This Land is Your Land
Yankee Doodle Dandy

2) Not all the comments on twitter were from "ignorant bigots", "racists", etc, albeit the majority of those listed were. Some sincerely did not like an "American Anthem" being sung in a language other than the Official Language of the United States of America.

3) Citizens are usually referred to by the definitive characteristic of their country's formal name. Ironically, there doesn't seem to be as much vocalized irritation with those shortened names. Here are some examples (and please forgive me if I am not current, as it's been ages since I actively studied geography):

The "Federal States of Micronesia" is the formal name for Micronesia. Citizens are considered Micronesian.

The formal name of Mexico is "Estados Unidos Mexicanos", which is commonly translated into English two ways: "The United Mexican States" or "The United States of Mexico". The citizens are called "Mexican".

The Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya is called commonly called "Libya" and it's people are Libyans.

When the USSR existed, it was the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" and it's people were called "Soviets".

The country of the Kingdom of The Netherlands is commonly accepted as "The Netherlands", and the citizens are called "Dutch", or "Netherlanders".

French Republic- "French"
Italian Republic- "Italian"
Republic of Korea- "Korean"
People's Republic of China- "Chinese"
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela- "Venezuelan"
Commonwealth of Australia- "Australian"
.... United States of America- "American"

This method or scheme of labelling citizens is commonly used, and would provide a neutral (non-egocentric) reason why they would currently be called "American". The naming does not necessarily mean any animosity nor egocentric bigotry against other countries (except the original independence).

4) Some people in the Americas are offended by USA citizens saying they're "American". Others seem to welcome it. When I was preparing to visit Latin America, I was told to be sensitive, as many people get upset with citizens of the USA calling themselves "American" for the exact same reason as has been expressed by many here. I totally understood why, and worked on not saying "American" for that reason.

I flew to El Salvador, everyone there called me "American"... It surprised and mildly confused me. I told them I'm from the U.S. and they are the ones who labelled me " American". Since then, I have been called "American" by: Canadians, Mexicans, Peruvians, Salvadorians, Chileans, Hondurans and Brazilians- all who have the right to argue against the term when used for only USA Citizens. I've also been called "American" by Chinese, Japanese, Germans, French, Italians, and many, many more.

5) For those opposed to USA citizens calling themselves "American", what do you propose they should be called (honest question)? To my knowledge, there are currently no other countries with "America" in it's name, though there are "States", "United", and depending on translation, "United States".

Where you are located and what field of study you are involved in will also determine your categorization of regions, and whether there is one "America" continent exists or instead, two separate continents ("North America" and "South America"). In the USA, they are taught that North America and South America are two separate continents. Geographers and many scientists also separate the regions. Here's a brief article related to this:

http://geography.about.com/od/learnabouttheearth/qt/qzcontinents.htm

Without it being uniform, it's difficult to come up with an agreed term that doesn't have arguments.

6)Spelling and grammatical errors often are the target of ridicule. Many twitter posts come from cell phones, to which generally seems to provide more errors than typing at a computer. That doesn't invalidate nor confirm a position on a subject. It doesn't mean they are completely stupid either... Though, I will gladly admit it is funny (frustratingly so, IMHO) and ironic that in this context there were complaints about the use (or non-use) of English, yet many statements don't use it properly either.

Thanks for reading my thoughts, and I wish you the the best. Feel free to respond if you wish, though I just ask you do so with no ill intent, as mine. Have a great day!

The vast majority of complaints have nothing to do with racism and if the Coca-Cola company wanted to make a commercial celebrating the "melting pot" effect while advertising soda, they could have just shown a modern version of that cheesy 1971 commercial about buying the world a coke. Or they could have just had America the Beautiful sung in English with Americans of various ancestries interacting with each other while drinking Coke.

As for your claim that English has been a "tool of oppression," are you serious? It's a language and it's the common language of the United States. Every ethnic Native American now speaks English which helps unite them even though their ancestors may have been bitter enemies. Also I use the term "ethnic" because if you are born and raised in a country, you are technically a native of that country.

As for your claim of that you have a responsibility to stand up against "racist bullshit," you sound like the type of person who would get hired by these people:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/

I on the other hand feel I have a responsibility to stand up against politically correct bullshit, double standards, actual racism like Affirmative Action and the promotion of white guilt, and multicultural extremism. Before you call me a bigot, let me remind you that I'm part Asian and I got targeted by black and white ghetto trash for being part Asian. The blacks got away with it the most because the public school officials claimed that it was normal for a young black person to act like a complete social degenerate.

You mean Indians by "ethnic Native Americans," I suppose? Now, now - is it not more realistic assumption that they should have liked to rather keep their own culture, belief system and language vibrant, and living, and let the English speakers keep their tuberculoses infected blankets? Even if there was tribal bickering?

Do you not think that the Keres (=ethic Native American) singing youngster would have rather preferred words of encouragement, and kindness, from fellow citizens?

I personally think it is a grand tragedy any time a language dies out, whether it is a question of centuries (Etruscans for example) or a mere generation (Eastern Islands).

I am most strongly in support of the economically "senseless" exercise of allowing saami (=Finnish native language) to be followed through as the mother tongue in the Finnish high school end exams (or matriculation examination). 13 out of 37,000 did this in 2012.

Is this the norm of North American native languages? Are all native languages alive, still, today in American soil, or shall some have died out?

If you must say nay to first and yea to second, what hedwards commented in terms of English being a tool of oppression is arguably rather fair. When a language dies out, it is hardly a spontaneous, nor, hopefully, irreversible process. And always a tragic loss.

Even if the Britons do not generally align themselves with continental Europe, too much, I still could not imagine any of them rejoicing how the Welsh, and the Scottish, and the Irish shall have been "united" the moment Gaelic languages are snuffed out!!

Edit: deleted out essential bit when simplifying.

Nobody is trying to snuff out any language in the United States. The stance that I take is that an official national language is necessary for the people of a nation to work better with each other and to unite as a country.

Sure there have been some Native languages that disappeared either because of time or conquest. After all, some Native tribes wiped out others and bred out the survivors although I'm sure incorporating surviving tribes into theirs may have changed their languages and customs too.

Bullshit.

What precisely do you think that whole "English as the national language" movement is all about? It's not about uniting the country, it's about asserting the worthlessness of other people and the general distrust of foreigners.

We're not talking about native languages that died as a result of the consequences of the conquests of the New World, we're talking about languages that were exterminated by forcing the people who spoke them to give it up. My family had to put up with that bullshit during the world wars when German was banned by the government.

You claim to have encountered racism. If that's actually true, you clearly didn't learn a damned thing from it. I remember growing up deeply ashamed of my cultural heritage because I had been taught to be ashamed of it. I speak up when idiots like you try to pretend like it's not being driven by racism, because otherwise it will creep back in. It makes me literally sick to my stomach thinking that they're applying the same bullshit to Mexicans and Muslims that I had to go through when I was a kid.

You really, really need to do some studying if you're going to suggest that any of this is new or that there's some sort of legitimate cause for concern over the language and national unity. The reason for the national unity problems is precisely because people like you choose not to do the right thing. I think somewhere in you that you realize that this isn't being driven by any sort of rational reasoning, that it's just the most recent way of expressing racism.

So, hedwards, I trust you must be very proud of Victoria Nuland, then? ;-) NB: being a little playful, because I like your style: +1.

I myself could have brushed off the backlash as a variation of clichédly "French style" dismissing of other languages - because one does not want to be confronted with the idea of possibly having to learn one, or other, to be understood.

Excepting the original American (=Keres) that I thought was quite an outrage to criticize; or possibly Spanish that in fullness of time might become the majority language in the USA.

I myself lived in AZ for a while, and cannot say that I saw much of the melting pot spirit going on between the "white collar" folks and the "unwanted type" of immigrants even in terms of mixing in the given neighborhoods.

I do, then again, think that the whole "we take hard stance on illegal aliens" contributed to AZ being hit more hard than necessary by the sub-prime crises. When such hardworking persons even took the rather poorly connected cross town buses, and bloody walked to their eventual workplace a couple of miles - this I thought was rather more admirable than a proof of readiness to exploit the system.

Did anyone ever suggest a law banning all other languages from being spoken in the privacy of the home? No.
Did anyone ever suggest that all other languages should get abandoned? No.
Are you trying to race-bait? Yes.

I learned plenty from the racism I faced. If you're of African ancestry and have dark skin, you can act like a social degenerate and some people will actually consider it "normal." If you say anything that sounds like the "n-word," you get in trouble right away and have to prove you're innocent instead of your accusers having to prove you're guilty. If you're of European ancestry, you are automatically guilty of slavery, conquest, and genocide as if nobody else of other ethnic heritage did any of that. Of course, I'm part-Asian so I was bullied for being part-Asian so the last one doesn't apply to me personally but it is something that I noticed when growing up.

Nobody is out to destroy Mexicans or Muslims or force them to give up all their cultural values if they come to the United States LEGALLY. People like me just simply ask Mexican immigrants (the legal ones of course) to remember that Mexico is the old country that they CHOSE to abandon for a new life in the US and that just as in Mexico, you are expected to speak Spanish; in the US, you are expected to speak English. As for Muslims, well Muslim isn't a race or ethnicity but the same basic concept applies. In other words, instead of the United States having to adjust to accommodate their special demands, they should adjust to accommodate the United States.

Quit trying to race-bait and pull your self-righteous head out of your self-righteous ass and see reality. A national language unites a people and helps every citizen work with other citizens. If you don't agree, go to Mexico and try to tell everyone to learn another language to accommodate you and to your personal needs.

Hum... how should a massive backlash against an indigenous language be seen other than... hostility? Or more mercifully - ignorance? Is this mayhap also why The Twin Peaks or The X-Fliles are the most visible exports of "native" characters cum culture from the US?

Mind you - a number of successful or at least well functioning nations have multiple "administrative" languages - such as Switzerland that has three major ones - Canada has the French, Finland has the Swedish etc. And then we also dub in the indigenous languages such as Kymri, Rumantsch, Saami... etc.

English in USA has never been a hegemony, because USA is not a national state as such. German came very close at the original vote, and so might have French, had they not had anti-Huguenot policies in place in the colonies.

English, of course, is mainly a mix of "French" and "Norman" enriched by many a loan word, and will, for sure, survive in the GB, at least. Whereas languages such as Keres have no chance to survive but in North American soil, lest they be lost forever.

I think it would be easier to brush this stuff off as less serious if it weren't such a pervasive pattern throughout American history.

A lot of people don't realize just how serious linguistic profiling is. Deciding whether or not you're going to accept the person or dehumanize them; or something in between is a very serious matter. In some countries, like China, the lack of linguistic consistency does represent challenges that sometimes need to be addressed, but you don't normally see that in the US.

The crap that this sentiment represents is not going to go away as long as people rationalize it and turn a blind eye. Locally we are mostly ahead of the curve on this. We've gone from racist mob violence a bit over a hundred years ago, to racially segregated neighborhoods to desegregation and ultimately acceptance and we still have some issues, but it's largely been because we've taken the issue seriously and done something about it.

Places where people write this sort of thing off as being innocent or not so serious are going to take a very long period of time in order to improve. But, I do believe that most of the US is closer than some people think, it just takes a bit of spine.

You don't get out much do you? XD

From now on forum members are no longer allowed to refer to me as silly or deluded! :D

Forget the immigrants then, let's discus the born citizens.

Ask the Mexican Americans in the State of Arizona, people born in this country, who are mandated to prove citizenship any where at any time to any officer of the demands it how they feel about cultural equality.

Ask all the Japanese Americans who were 3rd and 4th generation Americans (many of them highly decorated World War I veterans) yet still locked up in internment camps stripped of all their naturalized rights how they feel about cultural equality in this country.

BTW the first President of the United States born in the United States wasn't even born an English speaker.

I have to say, hedwards, in my view, at larger scale of things, the more serious discussion should be about languages that died out when Northern America became subject to conquest - and how to prevent further loss that might well be irrevocable.

The reason I say this is that you, or any of your family, can reconquer the family heirloom by simply learning German to a sophisticated level. Have you made any such effort?

I did not directly come to experience discrimination before I came to live in Switzerland (not speaking this or that village dialect) - though I did observe racism or narrow-mindedness everywhere else too, as I think will any self-aware person.

And I think we are most likely even intended to feel this way, due to our human tendency towards cohesion.

Best way to get over it, I think, is to live it. Hence, it is a good experience, as such, in terms of empathy - though there is nothing to learn morally - it is still wrong.

What I find ironic though is the four national languages topic - I had such a high perception! :-(
Can you pray provide an example cum reference?

First of which, the Americans of Mexican ancestry get questioned on their citizenship because they match the descriptions of the illegals as well as the smugglers who US Border Patrol agents and law enforcers are struggling to fight off. It's not cultural bigotry to go by the description of the suspect. If someone who looks Asiatic commits robbery, is male, and was wearing dark clothing; I would expect authorities to question me if I was walking around in the same town as the scene of the crime especially if I was wearing dark clothing.

As for the incarceration of Americans of Japanese ancestry, that was a dumb move by Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration and one of the reasons why I despise his administration and why I dispute any claim that venerates the bastard as a "great US president."

By the way, notice I don't use hyphenated labels when talking about Americans. The citizens of the United States are Americans first and foremost.

More importantly, I never said there wasn't bigotry. In fact, my comments are simply about how English is suppose to be the national language of the United States. My comments are about how countries are suppose to have an official national language. I don't give a flying shit if George Washington wasn't born an English speaker. He along with the rest of the Founding Fathers of the United States spoke English, wrote in English, and treated English as a national language.

To finish you off, a blast from the past:

http://incaseimgone.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/theodore_roosevelt_quote_immigration.jpg

I may not be a big fan of Theodore Roosevelt because of his political shortsightedness and his trust in fellow public officials especially bureaucrats but I agree with him completely on that quote about immigration, patriotism, and the English language. I also agree with his support for hunting as a form of conservation and some of the things he did to preserve wildlife but that's a topic for another thread.

I live in a northern border state. Are you saying that it should be legal for police officers to harass anyone they think "looks" Canadian? Do you really think a law like that could ever be passed?

Not a response, but Just a minor correction. You have to read it carefully.

The answer to TinyE's post is Martin Van Buren.

We normally don't have an epidemic of Canadians sneaking into the United States so it wouldn't make sense. I still wouldn't mind authorities asking for identification since basic laws and Constitutional restraints of law enforcement still apply. Besides, police ask of identification all the time especially when they pull you over when driving.