Native
The term "native" can have many different social and political connotations in different contexts. In some cases it is a neutral, descriptive term, for example, when stating that one is a native of a particular city or that a certain language is one's native language. However, in the context of colonialism—in particular, British colonialism—the term "natives", as applied to the inhabitants of colonies, assumed a disparaging and patronising sense, implying that the people concerned were incapable of taking care of themselves and in need of Europeans to administer their lives; therefore, these people resent the use of the term and consider it insulting, and at present English speakers usually avoid using it. This connotation has also led to controversy over the preference of the terms Native American or American Indians, though this controversy has resulted in either term being acceptable to most American Indians. And in the context of Nativism, in some periods a potent political force, "natives" are defined as a (predominantly white) group deserving of a special privileged position in comparison to immigrants.
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Famous quotes containing the word native:
“The Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones of the soil.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one’s native State;Mneither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)