It has been used as a slur by white people at least since the late 19th Century. Many native peoples say it is offensive. Are you calling them hypersensitive? Speak carefully now.
I really dislike this comment.
The implication is that: Only a racist would disagree with me. You're not a racist are you? Speak carefully now.
rquantz is stating clearly that the word is offensive and implying therefore it's wrong to use it. If that is an issue, I believe it certainly should be raised.
What's interesting is that drawing attention to such things is now what is 'politically incorrect'.
We should always be respectful of what might offend folks. But we should also strive to make sure the other folks aren't intellectually handicapped and unable to discern a slander from just a word. If the term has no negative connotation until 40-ish years ago, and all of the negative connotation was fabricated out of thin air? That's at least as notable as the fact that it might offend some. Probably more so.
Our mutual desire to live in a friendly society is always at odds with our mutual desire to know what the hell we're talking about. Each of us has an obligation to, in as kind a manner as possible, educate the other about what they might find truly offensive or not if they were better educated. Otherwise civil discourse is just a contest to see who can be offended the most.
PC is being a weasel and not having the discussion. PC is not trying to kindly point out that there may be another side to things. PC's definition has not changed.
I'm not sure where the assumption that "I'm not allowed to be offended" has somehow become implicit in society, but it's a false assumption. You have no such right.
Edit: The downvotes are very instructive. HN: your privilege is showing.
It has nothing to do with legal rights. We have the right to say anything we want to each other and to our mothers (short of a death threat), but that doesn't mean we should.
Throughout the history of humanity, most would say you have a social 'right' (not a legal one) to be treated with respect. That includes not being insulted.
Don't dismiss the power of the "euphemism treadmill" to change the connotation of a word over time.
Yet that is how humans always have communicated, avoiding saying offensive words; it's a tradition at least as old as the Ten Commandments and probably as old as human culture.
A word - any word - is offensive when and if used to offend someone, but it doesn't make the words as such taboo. Various words such as 'squaw', 'nigger', 'faggot', 'retard', 'raghead', 'chink', 'kike' (did I miss some whole class of slurs? These come from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_pejorative_terms_for_p...) are the appropriate words to use in some contexts such as the meta-context of discussing political correctness, or historical literature (e.g. Uncle Tom) or descriptions of names as they were used back then - as in this topic, the original article about naming those submarine-like objects.
Human history in a nutshell, really. Just about every country's founding has a history of blood and conquest. They're just pieces of land, after all. Their ownership always has and always will change.