I believe that sensitivity and tact are the key here. It is no secret that black people have a lot of fun calling each other the infamous "n..."-word, both privately and publicly. Yet, it is absolutely not appropriate nor acceptable TODAY for white people to use that word. Jewish people love telling Jewish jokes. Again, it is not appropriate or acceptable for gentile to tell these same jokes. These assumptions are pretty obvious today, but they would have been ridiculed as little as 30 years ago. My wife works with native kids at school and, she says, they refer to themselves mostly as Indians. Does that mean everyone else should be calling them Indians publicly? I don't know, but I lean towards "probably, not".
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