What silly political posturing. Native-born is the specific reference, and a perfectly valid one. By your logic, if the current descendants of people who have been here for many centuries by now aren't natives, than vast parts of the world's population are also not natives of the places where their families have lived for centuries.

Why not go further and say that the "natives" also aren't natives since they also migrated to the Americas over the Bering land bridge?

▲ griomnib 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

People were here, and Europeans showed up and killed nearly all of them, claimed all the land as their “manifest destiny”, and proceeded to subject the few original inhabitants they didn’t kill to lives of desperation.

Call that whatever you want.

▲ dotancohen 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

  > By your logic, if the current descendants of people who have been here for many centuries by now aren't native.

It's not my logic. The term Native American has an agreed, standard meaning. Trump's family does not meet that meaning. My comment was not an attack on your political views.

Are you suggesting that being born in a place makes one native? I'll accept that definition. Now go convince the rest of the world to update their definition of Native American.

	▲	southernplaces7 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		And as you apparently agree, the term native, in reference to someone born in a particular place (regardless of ancestry) also has a standard meaning, which millions of Americans who are natives of the country meet. It also happens to be a good definition, because it helps fight against the kind of idiotic racism by which the descendants of immigrants (especially those who are non-white) still get labeled as foreigners despite being native born. Again, silly, pedantic social justice posturing because the context of the comment about Musk not being native is obviously in reference to this, not native American history. As the other reply above states, the first nations, as they're called where I'm from, often suffered terribly at the hands of white settlers historically, and there's no honest way to deny that, but it's a separate matter from discussions about what makes a person American today.