Two things:

1.
 > So does that make illegal aliens
 > from Mexico Americans?
A fair question, I believe. In my view the answer is
* no for people who break the law to come here over
   the course of months or years, and
* yes for people forced against their will under the law
   to work and live as Americans over the course of
   years or generations.
The Americans who worked with the likes of Lt. R. E. Lee to build Fort 
Monroe obviously fit with the second, if you ask me. And if, for 
example, some legally free Norwegian American had been working there too 
for Lt. Lee, he'd have been not one bit more American than the enslaved 
Americans were. And though the year is now 2009, we still do not see 
this clearly in our country, it seems to me.

2. (From Anita Wills in another thread.)
 > I told him that I was writing about Colonial Virginia,
 > and used the language from that period.
Was the word that some call the "n-word" in common use then? (I call it 
the n-slur.) If so, would you use that word simply because they used it 
commonly then? If the answer is no, does that mean there are cases when 
a word's use from former times in fact does not dictate your own use of 
it? (Full disclosure: I personally hate the words mulatto and quadroon 
and octoroon -- and, for all I know, duodecimoseptaroon, or whatever -- 
because race is mainly socially constructed, and to use those words 
seems to me to confer just a bit of legitimacy on the perverted notions 
that race is a good deal more than socially constructed.) (Yes, yes, I 
know -- sometimes you have to use the word from the time because 
denotation and clarity require it. I do see that that's so.)

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