It is
necessary to first look at how one viewing this topic from a negative side,
would take offense to such a thing as Native-American mascots. Taking a step back and putting yourself in
someone else’s shoes or shifting paradigms, I can see how the Native-American
culture is looked at as a joke. For so
long, as a society, we have put the Native-American race in the back seat and
have viewed them as a secondary culture to races that we give more attention to
such as African-American, Caucasian, and Asian-American. My stance here is to not persuade one to why
this is offensive or not, it is to make one aware of how this could this could
be a misrepresentation to some.
The Native American mascot in
sport is so prevalent today that I don’t even have think twice to what this
mascot is pertaining to. Teams like,
Florida State, Cleveland Indians, Chicago Blackhawks, Central Michigan, and
Washington Redskins to name a few are so common now a days that most people
probably don’t take time to think about what these mascots original meanings
are. In a CNN blog post from Moni Basu,
she spoke of the Cleveland Indians mascot, Chief Wahoo and how it is looked at
as a “racist caricature”. Also in the
blog, a lady by the name of Suzan Harjo
fought against the name, “Redskins”. She
characterized this name of redskins as the same equivalence as calling a black
person the “N” word. Someone looking
from the outside could definitely see where this lady is coming from in that
this word has such a negative connotation and as a society today, we just
simply look over it. If there was a
professional sports team that had some type of racist remark against a black,
Hispanic, or white person, there would probably be a huge problem because those
are first hand races. The word, redskin,
has passed over for so long that it has lost it’s vulgar and demonstrative
meaning. It is pretty evident today that
the “N” word has not lost it’s meaning to an extent, of course it does not have
the same sensitivity as it once did but it isn’t something that one would say
in public without getting criticized.
This is what Suzan was saying in her statement.
This whole thing with Native-American mascots has to do with a
sense of empowerment. In today’s society
everything is ran by who has the most power. Everything we do in life it seems
like includes, who can obtain the most power.
Today we look at the white man to have power over a lot of things within
our society such as businesses, entrepreneurship, and in this case deciding on
if the use of a redskin mascot is acceptable or not. Roger Goodell, NFL commissioner, had his
input on why the use of the redskin mascot was acceptable and not harmful. Goodell began to pick apart and point at some
of the strong quality traits and characteristics these people have. So what we see here is how empowerment at
it’s best. Roger Goodell, an upscale,
wealthy man clearing up what is a negative term used to describe the Native-American
race. This tactic is used to almost
pacify the race and discount the race as a whole. In another journal, The Indian Wars, the article stated that, “Today, mainstream
Americans think that indigenous peoples should be very proud and honored to be
portrayed in everyday sports culture.” This is another example of empowerment. Society makes this culture appear that they
should be honored to be mentioned with other races of majority in today’s
society.
Another way as to why someone
can view these mascots as a misrepresentation is because just like all white
people and Hispanic people etc, aren’t the same, this statement applies to
Native-American’s as well. Just like
different Caucasians are typically intertwined with another culture such as
Irish or Italian, Native-Americans are also broken down into other branches of
their race. Today we have categorized the
whole race of Native-Americans as one rather than acknowledging their different
types of people of that culture. 
The last point that I wanted to
bring about as to why people may view the Native-American mascot as a
misrepresentation is because of the how some of the sports teams rallies may
represent a form of mockery. One of the
most prominent gestures we see in sports is the tomahawk used by the Atlanta
Braves and Florida State. With the gesture being used as a symbol of rallying
on a team to some, it doesn’t to others.
Some view this as a form of mockery to the culture. Another example of this was at the University
of Illinois where their mascot Chief Illiniwek would do a supposed tribal that
was found to be very offensive to some because it was viewed as disrespect to
the Native-American culture. This action
was such a disturbance to some that the mascot was no longer allowed to do the
routine.
As I stated earlier, my stance
on this is that this is not a big of a deal as some people make it out to
be. Sometimes you can read into to
something so hard that it can almost be erratic at some of the thoughts that we
have on these topics. My position was to
show how the other side would potentially view this topic.
Links
http://jss.sagepub.com/search/results?fulltext=The+Indian+wars&x=0&y=0&submit=yes&journal_set=spjss&src=selected&andorexactfulltext=and
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