For crying out loud, just stop.Granted, I'll concede that sometimes terms that start out as hate speech can be reclaimed by the groups they were meant to attack, like "gay" and "queer" have been. But that doesn't necessarily make it okay for people outside those groups to use it -- as with the n-word when it's used within the black community versus when it's used by others. I don't see this term being embraced and redeemed by the Native American community -- I see it being used by a white-dominated sports culture to reduce Native Americans to comical mascots, and being too sentimentally attached to their sports iconography to be honest about its problematical aspects.
There can be legitimate grounds for different points of view on this issue, but that's just it -- they're legitimate. On both sides. Lots of people have very genuine reasons for being concerned by such usage, and it's petty and condescending to insult people's intelligence just because you don't agree with them. If you want to explain why you see it differently, fine, but don't dismiss them as "soft in the head" simply for having a different perspective from yours.
If you want to be a bleeding heart, fine. But you can't expect everyone else to cry along with you. Especially those you're supposedly crying for, when they're not the ones complaining.
This is a minority of a minority of a minority making waves, goaded into it by another miniscule group of malcontents trying to pasteurize and homogenize our culture into something with absolutely no diversity, contrary to what they claim. If these people have their way, one day the only way we'll be able to communicate is to have an English-to-Approved-Speech dictionary open at all times.
Now, CAN WE GET BACK ON TOPIC???
Jeez.
