It seems to me from the contemporary lit I've been hitting that the French of the 18th & 19th centuries, whose culture was (& is?) about as globally exulted as America's is today, had very different feelings about what to define as, nationally, their own. Anything noble, brave, elegant, or clever was readily appropriated and defined by a Frenchman as "French". Which makes sense if you think about it- not only does the aspirational Catherinian courtier get a Gallic distinction, but the term "French" itself gets reinforced as meaning excellent or beautiful or whatever.
So why do we Americans have such a issues with spreading our own nomen during our golden hour? I don't think anyone disagrees that that new Miss USA chick is hot or Latino MLB players aren't athletic wunderkinds. And not just now- for centuries it's been the Germans, the Irish, the Italians, the blacks, the Cubans, etc etc.
It's because we know who the real Americans are. It's not us. It's the innocent brown people we disrupted and decimated in Chapter 2 of our history books. We're stingy and nervous and spiteful about who to call American because we're afraid that, really, we ourselves aren't it. Until we somehow make peace with the way our country was founded, we'll always be pissy and defensive over who gets to identify as its citizen.
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