I guess you are being a little bit insensitive by calling him "pedantic".
As an "American" from the South, and having friends in both Central and North, we constantly make fun of the fact that we can't call ourselves Americans the way Europeans and Asians do.
Another "interesting point" though is that the Indigenous population are still called Indians and the the real Indians are not identified as Asians.
You can call yourselves "South Americans" though, and everybody would understand.
Not all taxonomies consider "America" as one continent. In geography school we were taught of North America and South America as different continents. And if you check Wikipedia, you'll see there are several ways to divide the continents, and they cound from 5 to 7 depending on how you look at it, IIRC.
>Another "interesting point" though is that the Indigenous population are still called Indians and the the real Indians are not identified as Asians.
In my corner of Europe we don't consider the "real Indians" as Asians either. Some cultures do, but we prefer to reserve the "Asian" moniker for the far east (Malaysia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea etc). I don't see much cultural or historical resemblance between these and Indians.
As an "American" from the South, and having friends in both Central and North, we constantly make fun of the fact that we can't call ourselves Americans the way Europeans and Asians do.
Another "interesting point" though is that the Indigenous population are still called Indians and the the real Indians are not identified as Asians.