100 Ways White People Can Make Life Less Frustrating For People of Color

[Igel]

13. And yet the word "America" covers just the USA.

Just as "United States" in Spanish is "estados unidos," and I had one person argue calling the USA just "United States" was a hurtful chauvinist slam against Mexicans proud of their "Estados unidos (mexicanos)". Sadly, that person was a professor and, seriously, should have known something about how language works when spoken by actual people (pretty much regardless of language).

When speaking of "the Americas" you get two continents and never some sort of plural of majesty referring to the US. When speaking of "America," you get a country; speaking of a continent as "America" would be too confusing without context, and in context we wouldn't notice the problem. "North America" is the continent, "Northern America" is part of a country.