Even if a majority if indigenous folks didn’t mind the label, it’s still a label born of ignorance. It’s not like it becomes just OK because the surviving oppressed minority incorrectly labelled that way by the colonists are OK with it.
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YamahaRevstar@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
A guy at work said to me:
“Did you know that Native Americans don’t mind being called Indians?”
Oh, you polled thousands of people from all parts of the country?
I wanted to turtle into my shirt.
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.cafe 5 weeks ago
People actually have done that, and by a decent but not landslide majority (upper 60s%, IIRC), the original inhabitants of North America like the catch-all term: ‘American Indian’. Halfway alluding to the other guy’s reply, they actually do like to call attention to the ignorance that was put upon them upon first meeting. It’s hardly their blunder to be embarrassed by, and that moniker has become part of their history. Has it not?
If you want to be truly proper, you’d have to get down to the nitty-gritty & list every single tribe ever. By name. And that doesn’t work very well on a form when you’re making people check & sort themselves into boxes.
…which brings me to the final, and most ironic point of it all. People insisting on using Native American & African American often fail to realize those titles were put upon those people by the goddamn United States Government. Yes, the same one that enslaved the blacks. The same one that drove the American Indians from their lands, hunted them for sport, and rounded them up into camps. After the mistreatment, the USG said, “Hmm, what should we call these people? Oh, I know. ‘Native Americans’ & ‘African-Americans’.” Now it’s been baked into the cake for so long nobody even stops to question it, they insist upon it. Even if it’s technically inaccurate in niche cases (like Jamaican Americans), or insensitive (being labeled by your conquerors).
…idk. Call me a romantic bumpkin, but I work with black men & women who haven’t stepped a single foot in Africa. They eat cheeseburgers like I do, we drink from the same water fountains & use the same toilets, we shake hands. There’s nothing African about them besides their genetics; they are Americans just like I am an American. They happen to be black. Idk too many American Indians around here, only some with very diluted, distant heritage.