“We’ve got a real Indian with us this Thanksgiving!”

I cringe when I recall this announcement, which my hosts included in each and every introduction between me and their other guests during my first holiday away from home as a Dartmouth College freshman. It wasn’t worth it to fly all the way home to North Dakota for the long weekend, so a group of us went to a dorm-mate’s parents’ house in Connecticut. As much as I still appreciate the family for welcoming me into their lovely home and feeding me copious amounts of expensive food, I have to say that the number of times they felt the need to point out my race to the other guests was... uncomfortable. For me, at least. But hey, I guess it was my first Thanksgiving with a bunch of Whites too, so that was pretty neat. (Long Live the Pilgrims! But where are their fancy bonnets?)

Anyway, the point of this anecdote is to share an example of subtly inappropriate language. I was offended for being made a novelty at the Thanksgiving dinner table, but I was also annoyed by the choice of grammar within the offensive jest. You see, instead of choosing to describe me as a human or person who could be further described as American Indian ("This is Chelsey, and she is Indian"), I was grouped—human plus race—into one noun or object with an indefinite article ("This is Chelsey and she is an Indian." Sounds different, right?)