In many ways this reminds my of the recent "Redneck" thread, as well as earlier threads that discussed "Blue Tailed Fly" and the infamous "N-word".

As someone in an earlier thread said, "We can tell when a word is used as an insult." I never considered "Indian" an insult until "Native American" came around, and I thought that a lousy construction. (Mind you, I grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood and never even heard the word "nigger" until I got to high school. When we played "Cowboys and Indians" everyone wanted to be Indians, because they always won.)