The NCAA recently enacted a postseason ban on teams that have offensive mascots. While this is certainly a nice idea and very inclusive of them, I have a certain problem with this ban. The problem, of course, is the simple problem of who, exactly, is being offended here and who is to decide that a mascot is offensive.
Now the problem here is a bit more complex than initially meets the eye. The thrust of the postseason ban is, of course, to stop teams from using Native Americans as mascots in order to show some respect to the people that we all stole the land from. I will grant that this is a nice idea, what with the fact we keep stuffing them into reservations like they are wildlife, but I think this effort is misguided. Not so much for the attempt to respect the wildlife, as much as the fact that Native Americans -- unpopular as this opinion may seem -- are actually human. And they can speak for themselves, fine thanks. And they don’t seem to have a problem with it.
Though I will grant that polls are one monumental crock of shit most the time, a recent poll of Native Americans showed that they were overwhelmingly (i.e. 90%) not offended by the name Washington Redskins. Admittedly, this is among the worst of the names that have been used to characterized the former inhabitants of the area we now call the United States, since this is a pejorative term and now it has been turned into a mascot. Needless to say, the name has produced such an outcry among the forward thinking folks in this country of ours that colleges have been forced to change their "Redskins" name to something that will not have people protesting outside their athletic offices.
Furthermore, there is a great deal of uproar over the Cleveland Indians choice of Chief Wahoo as their mascot. Personally, I think Cleveland should change their baseball team's name to something that would acknowledge their contributions to the navigation and trade upon the Great Lakes. I'm thinking that the Cleveland Steamers would be a suitable name. After all, it would certainly explain much of their baseball team's history. However, changing the name would require Cleveland to finally ditch their inferiority complex, stop trying to impress every other city with the fact that they can be cool too, and finally tell everybody to fuck off, but that's never going to happen. I grew up near there and know the place too well. Fucking Cleveland.
Anyway, back to Chief Wahoo. Yes, I will agree that he is pretty offensive. Yes, he is the typified emblem of racist ideas of Native Americans. Yes, I will agree that he seems to be all that is wrong with America and its problems with race. However, I would like to point out one simple fact that prevents me from really making a considered opinion on the matter:
I'm white.
That's right, I'm a honky, cracker, paleface, whitey. And there is no way that I can attempt to make an objective analysis of the issue without acknowledging this fact. In fact, the NCAA is also filled with a bunch of whiteys just like me and they are making the same value judgement.
Unfortunately, white people have a distinct problem with non-white mascots. That's right, any mascot that is not Fighting Irish, Viking, Cornhusker, Yankee, Mountaineer, Celtic (pronounced wrong, I might add), Patriot, Buccaneer, Pirate, Cowboy, Hoosier, Volunteer, Aggie or Sooner is not good enough. I guess I'm the only one who sees this as a problem, but I will go ahead anyway.
Don't believe me? Then chew on this for a while: How many teams, high school or college, are nicknamed, "The Zulus". That's right, African culture -- the one culture that has been pigeonholed, objectified and generally disdained most by white America -- has not been insulted to the point that they have been turned into mascots. In fact, I seem to notice a distinct lack of mascots named for black cultures in the U.S. Coincidence? I think not. Even if you didn't do "The Zulus", you could have "The Nubians", but I think that's asking way too much. All they did was conquer Egypt, for God's sake, but you won't be seeing anybody taking them as the face of their school.
How about this for an alternate theory: by taking the name of an African culture, a team would be forcing its fans to connect to Africa. For instance, a white Florida State fan is happy to refer to himself or herself as a Seminole. Imagine that same Southerner wearing a sweatshirt with two crossed spears behind a hide shield (see Kenya's flag for an idea of what I am talking about) while saying, "Damn right I'm a Zulu!"
Oddly enough, it seems that white people are willing to mascots with pale skin as tributes and mascots with darker skin as insulting. Personally, I think that this is very telling. Allow me to put this into a syllogism:
Fact: White people think of white mascots as tributes.
Fact: White people think of non-white mascots as offensive.
Theorem: White people are offended by tributes to people who are not white.
That's right, white people don't like to acknowledge our darker skinned brethren as being worthwhile. If they didn't think that, they wouldn't have a problem with dark skinned mascots. If they were genuinely offended by darker skinned mascots, white people would not look at mascots that portray themselves as being offensive. Besides, having dark skinned mascots would require white people to acknowledge that there are people with different skin colors in the world, whereas white people tend to think of themselves as the people who will somehow save dark skinned people from the fact that they are, in the eyes of white America, inherently retarded.
But by removing any possible sympathetic connection between white sports fans and, in this case, Native Americans, progressive opinion is finally saving whites from having to think of Native Americans in any context. Personally, I think this is preferable to the current state of affairs, where white people only think about Native Americans when they need a place to buy cheap cigarettes.
To return to Chief Wahoo, I saw an editorial cartoon some time ago that showed that the name "Indians" is inherently offensive. Well, the odd thing about it was its presentation. The cartoon, of course, showed a few different races typified in the same racial stereotypes as Chief Wahoo and it was designed to create an uproar. However, I found it very telling that the cartoon showed pictures of the Cleveland Chinese, the Cleveland Blacks, and some other minorities I can't remember offhand. The thrust of my argument is that there was no Cleveland White People in the cartoon. However, the cartoon was aimed at a white audience. After all, 80% of the population of the United States is white, so the cartoonist must have some sort of broad appeal to this demographic.
The overall point, of course, is that white people feel an overall need to protect the darker skinned people, as though darker skinned people are not capable of looking out for themselves just fine, thank you, and it is up to white people to save other people from whatever might be bothering them. Or at least things that white people think should be bothering people who are not from east of the Caucasus Mountains. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the White Man's Burden has changed shape. Has it occurred to any of the white people who are trying to save the rest of the world that non-whites are quite capable of dealing with problems and they might not need saving from themselves? See, non-whites have these things called brains and they happen to use them every day, so they are very used to their functions. But it seems that white people are attempting to keep non-whites from having to worry their pretty little heads about all those big concerns in life and, don’t worry, white people will take care of the problems. This certainly explains the way that white people try to figure out solutions to the problems of Africa without consulting, let's say, Africans.
The battle over mascots is just part of a larger problem in which white people pretend to have all the answers and they will always be there to prevent non-whites from having to actually think. Maybe if white people would stop treating non-whites like wildlife, the world would be a much happier place. But, unfortunately, white people are all more than happy to try to prevent non-whites from actually thinking. And they are doing non-whites no favors by it.
Fucking white people.