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Originally Posted by Bailey  Injun' being offensive is common knowledge. I think using any variation of Indian, instead of Native American, is pretty much outdated at this point. Kind of like the band name, though.
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Indian is perfectly accepted as a synonym for Native American.
This stuff really isn't that hard. There are two ways to describe what we perceive as race - one is skin color and the other is ethnicity. Black and white are really the only acceptable options for the former, African-American, Asian, Native American, Hispanic and so on describe the latter. In the United States, black people are almost always African-American, and African-Americans are almost always black, so the terms are largely interchangeable, if not synonymous. Nonetheless, since race can be a touchy subject, it's good to know precisely what you're saying. For some reason, a lot of white people have the impression that "black" is somehow a bad thing to say, which is ridiculous - if anything, it's preferred. And you won't sound like a closet racist trying too hard to hide it in polite company.
Also, foreigners like Craig should be given a pass. A lot of the connotations around these words are uniquely American and, beyond that, Americans are much more sensitive to racial terms. I spent a lot of the last year around very progressive Irish students and I repeatedly had to remind them that "half-caste" is not an appropriate way to refer to Barack Obama.
