Meditations of a JiuYitzu Apprentice
Sports Mascots
posted Sunday, 9 October 2005
A flame of controversy has been reignited vis-à-vis the issue using the American Indian as a college mascot. Earlier this summer, the NCAA passed a resolution that will, forbid, effective February 2006, any university with a Native American mascot deemed ‘hostile’ or ‘abusive’ to participate in postseason tournaments. Not surprisingly, this decision has been met with outrage by some, and Florida State University, for better or worse, has been the recipient of considerable media attention. University president T. K. Wetherell, in response to the NCAA ruling, has vowed to seek legal recourse to insure that the general public is aware of the university’s close bond with the ‘unconquered’ spirit of the Seminole tribe of Florida. In other words, the university intends to put up a big fight to retain its mascot. Incidentally, the tribe itself voted this past June to accept the Seminole mascot and corresponding imagery, and Wetherell’s case was further bolstered in July with a resolution by the Oklahoma Seminole nation (a party that was initially opposed to FSU’s claim on its heritage) to lend its support to the mascot. The battle ensues.
It could be argued that the mascot issue is an inflammatory one because of legitimate complaints lodged by disenfranchised parties coupled with the ostensible failure of established and powerful institutions to adequately address those complaints. True, the NCAA has made a move to push university athletic programs away from identifying themselves through Indian motifs, especially those deemed to be ‘hostile’ and ‘abusive.’ But while such an effort on the part of the NCAA could be viewed as a move in the right direction, the association’s futher statement that it is incapable of imposing a total ban on potentially offensive mascots is a stance regarded as simply unacceptable by interest groups advocating more sweeping reform (see the ideas propounded at www.aimovement.org to gain a more extensive understanding of the issue). While the rhetoric of the ‘anti-mascot’ camp is unquestionably reasonable and worthy of discussion, the already murky issue is further obfuscated by the current difficulty in ascribing a satisfactory name to the offended party. That is, the changing connotations associated with the terms ‘Indian,’ ‘American Indian,’ ‘Native American’ make the line between respect and offense exceedingly blurry, at least for me. Note, for example, my fumbling with the term throughout this piece. Such matters of taxonomy are important to consider with respect to this issue, I would argue.
That being said, Washington D.C.’s NFL franchise, ‘the Redskins,’ tends to top the list for being most overtly offensive in its choice of mascot, consequently inspiring much impassioned debate on the future of this team’s identity. Interest groups are furious at what they perceive as unabashed racism in the nation’s capital (see www.findanothername.com). By contrast, the franchise has no intention of changing the mascot claiming that it was originally created in deference to William ‘Lone Star’ Dietz, an early head coach of the team who happened to be an American Indian.
I recently proposed to a friend of mine (who is a Washington native now living in Denver and an ardent Redskins supporter) a solution to the naming dilemma. Of course, the D.C. is no stranger to renaming sports franchises, as its unfortunate reputation of being atop the list as a city with an alarming rate of murders and gunshot wounds per capita forced the Washington Bullets of the NBA to employ a more sensible sobriquet in 1997. So, even though such a process with the football club would undoubtedly take a while, it seems hardly out of the question as a solution. My suggestion was to keep change absolutely nothing with respect to color and image of the mascot itself (I have seldom heard the latter figure into this debate as a point of contention, rather it’s the name alone that incurs the wrath), but call the team the Washington Americans. There is enough wiggle room here, it would seem, for multiple parties to feel represented, unless, of course, people become offended by the imperialistic implications suggested by our namesake, Amerigo Vespucci.
It could be argued that the mascot issue is an inflammatory one because of legitimate complaints lodged by disenfranchised parties coupled with the ostensible failure of established and powerful institutions to adequately address those complaints. True, the NCAA has made a move to push university athletic programs away from identifying themselves through Indian motifs, especially those deemed to be ‘hostile’ and ‘abusive.’ But while such an effort on the part of the NCAA could be viewed as a move in the right direction, the association’s futher statement that it is incapable of imposing a total ban on potentially offensive mascots is a stance regarded as simply unacceptable by interest groups advocating more sweeping reform (see the ideas propounded at www.aimovement.org to gain a more extensive understanding of the issue). While the rhetoric of the ‘anti-mascot’ camp is unquestionably reasonable and worthy of discussion, the already murky issue is further obfuscated by the current difficulty in ascribing a satisfactory name to the offended party. That is, the changing connotations associated with the terms ‘Indian,’ ‘American Indian,’ ‘Native American’ make the line between respect and offense exceedingly blurry, at least for me. Note, for example, my fumbling with the term throughout this piece. Such matters of taxonomy are important to consider with respect to this issue, I would argue.
That being said, Washington D.C.’s NFL franchise, ‘the Redskins,’ tends to top the list for being most overtly offensive in its choice of mascot, consequently inspiring much impassioned debate on the future of this team’s identity. Interest groups are furious at what they perceive as unabashed racism in the nation’s capital (see www.findanothername.com). By contrast, the franchise has no intention of changing the mascot claiming that it was originally created in deference to William ‘Lone Star’ Dietz, an early head coach of the team who happened to be an American Indian.
I recently proposed to a friend of mine (who is a Washington native now living in Denver and an ardent Redskins supporter) a solution to the naming dilemma. Of course, the D.C. is no stranger to renaming sports franchises, as its unfortunate reputation of being atop the list as a city with an alarming rate of murders and gunshot wounds per capita forced the Washington Bullets of the NBA to employ a more sensible sobriquet in 1997. So, even though such a process with the football club would undoubtedly take a while, it seems hardly out of the question as a solution. My suggestion was to keep change absolutely nothing with respect to color and image of the mascot itself (I have seldom heard the latter figure into this debate as a point of contention, rather it’s the name alone that incurs the wrath), but call the team the Washington Americans. There is enough wiggle room here, it would seem, for multiple parties to feel represented, unless, of course, people become offended by the imperialistic implications suggested by our namesake, Amerigo Vespucci.
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