Last month, the Board of Trustees at McMurry University decided that their sports teams would no longer have nicknames. As silly as this seems, they thought there was a good reason: the NCAA rejected their appeal to keep the teams' original nickname, the Indians. This is just the latest in a long line of controversies and dramas involving sports teams being named after Native Americans. Should this be allowed? What if the team or university has the approval of local tribes? Where should the line be drawn? There are examples of 'positive' racial nicknames. Naming your team the Braves (Atlanta), Warriors (McClymonds College), or Rainbow Wahine (University of Hawai'i) while representing them positively and working with those communities isn't something political correctness zealots should get worked up about. However, there are some nicknames that deserve criticism, but do not receive it, namely because Native Americans have very little political power here, and everyone knows it. I'm referring to the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians. We'll start with the Indians. The name might seem innocuous, especially when you accept the romanticized notion that the team was named after Native American star Louis Sockalexis in 1915. But regardless of its origins (actually, they ripped off the more successful Boston Braves franchise), the way the team portrays Indians today is nothing short of shameful. Even Albert Belle would agree that using a racial caricature of a disenfranchised and abused group of people is far more than just inappropriate. The Indians' mascot, Chief Wahoo, is a leering, red-faced jester. Compared to other depictions of Native Americans in sports, Wahoo is by far the worst. No American Indian group has condoned the mascot. This karmic burden is the reason that even when the Indians do well, like in 1997, they inevitably play like the awful teams from the Major League films. A promise to Cleveland: you will not win a World Series until you redesign your logo and possibly rename the franchise. The Indians are the only team ever to be winning, go in to the ninth inning of a World Series game 7 and lose. Hopefully, Wahoo's big gruesome smile has something to do with that. The Redskins' logo is better, but their name is far worse. 'Redskin' is as ugly a racial slur as you can use. If a D.C. based-team called itself the Washington Sambos, no one would support the squad. Allowing the Redskins to skate by because the name is 'traditional' is an embarrassment. Far worse than the nature of these two franchises is what they imply about society as a whole. Casually accepted racism on an internationally broadcasted level (at least on the rare occasion those teams make the playoffs) is not only a really bad look for the United States, but it also influences the nation's youth. Right now, some small child is rooting for a team with a prejudiced name, while another one is wearing a hat that features a turn-of-the-nineteenth-century depiction of the most oppressed ethnic group in their country's history. If you can not find something wrong with those pictures, you might want to move to Europe, where racism is accepted by the fans, but condemned by the sane public. In 2002, one academic division at the University of Northern Colorado took an interesting step in the direction of fairness. Black, white, and Native American students formed an intramural basketball team that they proudly dubbed the Fighting Whites, complete with a 1950s-style Caucasian mascot and team slogan, "Every thang's gonna be all white." I call on one of our nation's obnoxiously rich white people to buy a major sports franchise - maybe even the Indians or Redskins - and rename it after their great race. We have accepted these names for so long that we don't realize how backward they are. Washington Whiteys or Cleveland Crackers, anyone?
Centuries of dishonor: Racial slurs have no place in sports
Published: Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Updated: Monday, August 9, 2010 20:08
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