Actually, a couple of them make perfect sense, at least when you see the U.S. from the outside (which the rest of the world is doing). “American”, for example, is often – but not always – used synonymously with people from the USA, i.e. U.S. citizens. It complicates things when you e.g. talk about all americans, including Canadians, Mexicans, south americans, etc. Only saying “Americans” when you actually mean U.S. subjects do call for confusion, when the speaker and the listener have different interpretations of what an american is. I have often been involved in discussions where one had to backtrack and specify whether one meant all people in the Americas or just U.S. subjects specifically. So using U.S. citizen or U.S. subjects instead of American is actually a good idea. As illustrated this song from the Arrogant Worms:
Further, it took me quite a while to understand what a “white paper” is, even though I am educated in and work with science and technology professionally. Had it actually been called “position paper”, a lot of confusion would probably have been avoided on my part. Calling a publically accessible document that discusses and takes a stand on a subject a “white paper” is imho quite disingineous, as it does not actually describe the purpose of the paper. Futher, you have “green paper”, “blue paper”, “yellow paper”, “grey literature” and “blue book” which are equally unimpressively named after colours. Confusing as hell if you’re outside the UK+US cultural sphere. I really wish for some alternative and more descriptive names for these. For practical purposes, not for “woke” purposes.