Yeah, so am I, and a lot of my family members still mean NA when they say "Indian." Since I've actually been to India twice (specifically the Northeast) I tried in vain to tell them not to call NAs Indians.
However, even Latin Americans still use the term indio to refer to a lot of their indigenous people, because that was the term that was used during colonization. Kind of like how all Germanic-speaking people were called "Dutch" until the late 19th century in the U.S.
Again, I agree that it's offensive to say "dots" (especially because there are many Indians who are not Hindu and don't have bindi or anything), but MANY Americans who don't live in a liberal state like California or New York are not exactly up-to-date on politically-correct terms.
The dots comment is unexcusable, but a LOT of US-ians still call Native Americans "Indians". Some NAs even refer to themselves as such within their tribal government registration.
So, while saying "dots" is inappropriate, I can understand why he wanted to make a distinction.
hey, at least it's not like my former Kiwi boss who would tell our Burmese clients that he was Southeast Asia, because he was from NZ. He also shouted at me for using US spelling and said, "this is an INTERNATIONAL business! Use UK standard spelling!"
As a former resident of Burma, I can assure you that they now use the metric system and write dates in the European manner. The UK colonization is complete, but has now been superceded by the military coup 😁😉
