Europeans saw us that way. If it ever was a ‘bad’ thing, it was because of their elitism. It was a matter of time the reclaiming of our dignity and our validity. Many Americans (continent) did so during their independence efforts (mostly 18th and 19th century). I found this:

In linguistics, reappropriation, reclamation, or resignification is the cultural process by which a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group. It is a specific form of a semantic change (i.e., change in a word’s meaning). Linguistic reclamation can have wider implications in the fields of discourse and has been described in terms of personal or sociopolitical empowerment. (Wikipedia)