On Calling an Indian an Indian

 

Can you spot the racial slur?

A correspondent asserts that the term “Indian” is derogatory. This is indeed a common view; but I hold it is arbitrary and nonsensical.

If, after all, the term is derogatory, it should be offensive to use it to refer to the natives of the Indian subcontinent. Which nobody holds it to be.  If you consider the same term offensive when used on or by one group, but not offensive when used on or by another group, the problem is not with the term. It is with you: you are treating people differently on the basis of race. You are a racist.

The original concern with the term is that it is supposedly inaccurate—Columbus supposedly mistakenly thought he had reached India, and declared the land the “West Indies.” This does not make it derogatory, any more than mistakenly calling an Australian an Austrian would cause offense.

But even this objection to the term is actually wrong. The very term “West Indies” shows Columbus did not think he was in the subcontinent—that was the East. The people of the Philippines were also referred to in Columbus’s time as “Indians.” So were Malaysians, and Indonesians, the Arabs in the Middle East, and the people of sub-Saharan Africa. “Indian” meant roughly what we currently mean by “native.” If “Indian” is offensive, then so is “native,” or “aboriginal,” or “indigenous.” Or “First Nations.”

Another objection is that it presents the misleading impression that all Indian cultures were similar, when in fact they were widely diverse. One should instead say “Innu,” or “Dogrib,” and so on. But if this objection is valid, it applies equally to the terms “white,” “Caucasian,” “Asian,” “European,” or “African,” all of which are common and not considered derogatory.

Is it objectionable because it is a term from English, and not from a native Indian language? But this is the same for all other  groups, and all other languages. “Irish” is not the term in Irish for the Irish: “Greek” is not the term in Greek for the Greeks; “English” is not the term in Korean for the English; and so on. English, like any language, has its own terms for various groups.

So what are we to call this group of people?

As it happens, “Indian” is, in both the US and Canada, the proper legal term. Unlike any other term, it has a clear legal definition. It is therefore the correct and precise term; who or what counts as “First Nation,” or “aboriginal,” or the like, is ambiguous and open to dispute. “Indian” is also commonly and historically used by Indians themselves, as in the “American Indian Movement.”

So why does anyone object to the term “Indian”? It is only a bit of academic snobbery, of cant or jargon, showing you are a member of an in-group who “knows better” than to use the common and familiar term.

A good writer and a good editor should resist and discourage all such cant and jargon. Given that writing is communication, we should always prefer the common and the most accurate term.