I have often wondered why it is still acceptable to call Native Americans "Indians".
It is an extremely colonial term, but its used in the country that is the most sensitive about using such terminology. It originates in a marketing term to cover the failure of someone who was, among other things, a slave trader.
On top of that it is ambiguous and often causes confusion, as here, so its not even a useful term.
Grouping people that way in general is barbaric anyway. There's no great answer. "Native American" is a colonial term too. What do they call themselves? It's up to them. Actually, it's up to the individual what they prefer. I don't like being labeled an "American".
> Actually, it's up to the individual what they prefer.
If referring to a group you cannot use a term that all individuals prefer as they will have different preferences. In general certain terms are not used - for example one for black people is never even written out in full by Americans. If one person said "I am fine with being called that" does not mean the rest of us should use it because most people find it offensive.
> I don't like being labeled an "American".
Being called an American Indian (which is necessary to avoid ambiguity) also means you are labeled an American.
"American" is also derived from the name of someone problematic (he even took part in a slaving raid) but that is another issues.
Thanks for clarifying that. Considering HN's worldwide readership, I should have anticipated that misunderstanding when I posted the quotation. I have now added "[= indigenous Americans]" above.
My bad. I too should have considered that the term "Indians" is ambiguous and should have looked up the reference book. Thought the title "Great Plains" was referring to plains including the Indo-Gangetic plain.
Is "East Indians" the commonly used name in the US for the people of India ? I've come across "Asian Indians".
Interesting question. My impression from afar (I live in Japan) is that “Asian Indians” and “East Indians” are both used but that just “Indians” is increasingly common, partly because of the growth in the number of people in the U.S. from India and partly because of the growing tendency in recent decades to avoid using “Indian” to refer to native Americans. Wikipedia has a long article on the latter issue:
I don't know that higher interest rates are necessarily anti-labor. Low interest rates result in rapid asset inflation and labor usually owns fewer assets.
Humans have relied on bread, pasta, rice, and tubers for most of their calories since time immemorial. Japanese people eat plenty of rice even today and they are very healthy.
"Food pyramid dumb, eat meat" is a very reductive take.
I never said eating rice was bad for you, but fruits, nuts, meats are also human staples. The big thing domesticated cereal brought us was rapid population growth and the state.
Then "school district fraud" shouldn't be a problem. If a parent is willing to committing a crime to get their kid into a good school, they're heavily engaged and involved.
School sizes do change over long time horizons as demographics grow. This is true.
But school buildings have limited capacity and teacher:student ratios should be maintained. These cannot be changed instantly. Planning happens according to people actually living there, so if a lot of people are circumventing the rules and cheating their way in it breaks the system.
Not even very long horizons. For example, a hot housing market can cause a rush of young families into a district as older retirees cash out and move to Florida or whatever. Schools adapt to this.
I agree following rules is important. What kind of example are you setting for your kids, right? But having some perspective is also important.
The official website says they collect either a driver's license number, state ID number, or the last 4 digits of your Social Security number. With that it should be trivial to flag potentially fraudulent applications for further investigation.
Do you have a source that says they don't use that information for verification?
"An official list of citizens to check citizenship status against does not exist. If the required information for voter registration is included – name; address; date of birth; a signature attesting to the truth of the information provided on the application; and an indication in the box confirming the individual is a U.S. citizen – the person must be added to the voter registration file. Modifying state law would require an act of the state legislature, and federal law, an act of Congress. Neither the Secretary of State nor the county auditor has lawmaking authority."
> That does say anyone can challenge a registration.
Yes, it does. But who and how is someone going to challenge 100,000 registrations? This issue was brought up in the paper, and people objected to it saying such was an invasion of privacy.
Activation energy of a letter vs. an email. If you have to handwrite it and it takes ~days to arrive, you write fewer communiques and put more into the ones you do, but a lot goes unsaid.
You see it start to change with the telegraph on down to where we are today.
> You see it start to change with the telegraph on down to where we are today.
Telegrams were paid by the word, and were all uppercase by design, they're not an evolution of language. It took more effort to adapt your message to a telegram than to write a proper sentence.
Not so sure. After my father died I came across a box of old letters that were sent between he and his friends, from their early college years. Just personal, casual correspondence, which today would be done with a messaging app or email. Even on the short notes, the structure, spelling, grammar, and even the penmanship is excellent compared to what I see people of the same age doing today.
You had to dedicate so many more resources to that, though. Mailing a letter requires gathering up paper, a pen, an envelope, a stamp, and the person's address, then physically transporting it to a mailbox. It also has a lot of inherent latency, so you have to pack a lot of content into the message because it'll take as much effort into clarifying something you left out on the first message. It's natural to put more care into something you've invested that much baseline effort into.
I wouldn't spend nearly as much effort on something ephemeral and instant. For instance, I'm not going to mail my sister in another state a letter saying "ok thanks". I very while might text her that, because 1) she knows exactly what I'm referring to — the thing we were talking about 11 seconds earlier; 2) the customs of messaging mean she doesn't expect or want a wall of text; and 3) if she has any more questions, she can ask them and I'll reply within a minute or two.
Nope. I have a bunch of family letters, and my great-grandmother put more effort into writing simple "Happy <holiday-name>!" postcards than some people do for their college applications. And she worked on a farm, and only had just 5 years of formal education.
The modern devolution of spelling is just not giving a fuck about norms and courtesy.
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