Letter: Anglo-Saxon upset
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: How on earth can someone with the name Hamish McRae refer with a straight face to "we Anglo-Saxons" ("The dawning of the age of the Anglo-Saxon", 7 January)?
The term "Anglo-Saxon" as an economic category is deeply irritating, inaccurate and highly un-PC. Given that the US is the main country thus denoted, I'm surprised that our American cousins, sensitive and literal- minded as they are in these matters, haven't fired volleys of criticism at this racist and WASP-privileging epithet.
If it is true that the US and the UK - we may also cite New Zealand and the Celtic tiger, Ireland - share a common and distinctive economic model, why not call it "Anglophone"? Not only is this more neutral; it also draws attention, as does Hamish McRae, to the role that happening to speak English has played in these countries' current good fortune.
AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER
Shipley,
West Yorkshire
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