President Trump has somehow decided that he should resurrect a subject that has been largely resolved now: team mascots, and the use of Native names and images. Bottom line: those who are being portrayed in these racist ways get to say if it’s ok or not. And the answer is definitively, it is not. It is offensive. But for whatever reason–presumably to play to his base with another anti-DEI rant (and his definition of DEI is ridiculously broad, basically anything that speaks to the issues of anyone who is not a white fundamentalist Christian cisgender heterosexual male) –he is pushing for the Washington football team, the Commanders, to go back to their old, highly racist name.
Please check out the YouTube video, “We are not your mascots,” narrated by John Kane. He says, “Native people are not in control of their own identity, their own image.” For those who claim that these mascots, along with the offensive gestures (the tomahawk chop) and other aspects of the team names and images, honor Indians, he says these mascots “Eliminate us. Write us out of history. And then create a fairy tale. Nobility, grand kings, manly. Not for us, but for you. For your mascots, for your sports teams. … You don’t honor us. You honor an image of your own creation.” He says, “We know who we are. We resent you appropriating any semblance of our image.” It is offensive, pure and simple, to see “white kids playing Indian.”
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