You know, I’m gonna pull a volte-face on this one. Having seen your question, and having thought about it, I find myself in agreement with you, and must abandon my former position.
In short - y’know, I actually can’t think of any good reasoning to support what I said, and now agree with you.
I guess, the only way to solve these “insults” is to:
[ul]Stop all kind of music – Rhiannaor Jay-Z & Kanye West…. Then some else does not like One pound fish
[/ul]
[ul]Stop making movies of any kind - I find “P.S.I Love you” offensive or when I say that the movie is crap, my wife is offended…. Or in other movies there are nude scenes or just straight out Porn[/ul]
[ul]No Internet – since there is Porn[/ul]
[ul]No TV – it’s just offensive and it has Porn[/ul]
[ul]No Paper – there is Porn as well[/ul]
[ul]No Cave Drawings – yes, they already had porn … Ah, crap, it’s also older than 6000 years, so it cannot really exist either, DAMN!:smack:[/ul]
Fuck it…. Pretty sad life without offending anyone for whatever reason, I better go to this, before someone from the “I’m offended Police” takes it down.
Yes. Indian-Americans and American Indians get to discuss amongst each other what form of expression will be mutually acceptable and inoffensive - although they may be of the opinion that you, no less than European-Americans, should go back to your country of origin and leave the American continent to its indigenous inhabitants, and if you’re unwilling to do that then a mere form of words is not much of a consolation prize.
As a Brit I’m in a cleft stick as far as my own country is concerned since I’ve no idea whether I should shove off back to Rome, Normandy, Denmark, Norway, Saxony or wherever, and in what proportion, and how much if any of me has a right to be here. But even the Celts were just a bunch of johnny-come-latelys, barging in here some time in the first millennium BC like they owned the place and displacing the previous occupiers.
The rest of the world, however, will probably go its own sweet way miscalling ethnicities and mispronouncing countries and cities just like they’ve always done. You can piss into the wind if you like, but you’re unlikely to effect a meaningful change.
Well, I certainly do, of course, but when giving a presentation in public I prefer to mix it up a bit with the words for variety–same as with “the Redcoats,” “Lobsterbacks,” “the enemy.” And I do use the phrase “native people,” too. I don’t think anyone would use the name Wampanoag four or five times in one short paragraph would they?
As to Anaamika’s question about Indians from India, it has never come up in the seventeen years I’ve guided tours, while the “Native American” thing was mentioned frequently.