Appropriation of Culture

Until I Read Gonzalez' article, I thought that Political Correctness has gone a bit too far when it comes to having the NCAA ban some mascots that refer to Native Americans (a.k.a. "Indians"). Frankly, I never really stopped to think that some of these mascots may be demeaning to Native Americans. While not as popular a kids' game as during my parents' and grandparents' generations, "Cowboys and Indians" has never been considered demeaning. Now, I can see why using terms like Indians and the implications of some "Indian" mascots is akin to the N word for African Americans. I can now understand that someone like the clown at the University of Illinois' half-time "performance" is as if some student would be covered in black and carrying watermelon and chitlin's, or someone else, dressed in a black suit with a beard and a yarmulke might be tossing around Matzos.

We spend too little time realizing that Native Americans, who inhabited what is now the United States for thousands of years before Columbus "discovered" them, also had a culture and art. We tend to think if "Indian culture" a bunch of guys with feathered bonnets sitting in front of a teepee smoking a peace pipe.

Even though the various sports teams and universities mean well, what they are doing is robbing Native Americans of dignity. I bet one of the most sparsely attended art courses would be Native American art. And yet, there are countless websites now, many of them created by students and universities and art museums that specialize in discovering and safeguarding ancient Native American art. I saw some fascinating rock paintings from the Southwest. There are carvings in and around the Grand Canyon that were probably made when so-called Western Civilization was still waiting for Greece and Rome and Egypt to emerge. There are still relics of pottery an d other earthenware, and textiles from hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

Maybe the key word in Mr. Gonzalez' article is the word DIGNITY. I am embarrassed to admit that European discoverers and those who settled the lands from Plymouth Rock to the coast of California have destroyed much of Native American culture. Many of our parents and grandparents have grown up with a heroic John Wayne and his cavalry killing "Indians" and feeling good about it. In reality, the white man, greedy for territory and natural resources, stole the lands, forced Native Americans into reservations, offered them little in the way of education and careers, and left them as second class humans (not to mention citizens).

Robbing minorities of their dignity is something at white Americans have become proficient. We turned African blacks into slaves. We looked down at the Irish, escaping the potato famine. We considered every Italian-American as being a member of organized crime, the Mafia. Jews were banned from country clubs and many jobs and are still accused of "running" show business, to the detriment of others. All Mormons are still seen as polygamists. And now, right-wing Born-Again Christians have decided that Charles Darwin is the anti-Christ.

Gonzalez is right when he says that no one would think of starting an athletic team called the Richmond Rednecks, the New Jersey Jews or the Nebraska Negroes. The problem is that there are still too many people in our society who feel that being white and middle class gives them some sort of moral and ethnic superiority, and that they are therefore entitled to laugh at clowns in Indian costumes or doing the tomahawk motion at an Atlanta Braves baseball game.

The burning question for me having read this article is not merely that names and mascots are wrong and demeaning, and dignity-robbing. But, what concerns me more is that too few people read this article and care whether a minority in this country, like Native Americans, would really be offended. What is sad is that, as this essay is written, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Today, we delight at slaughtering turkeys, unmindful that in history, once turkeys were slaughtered, the Native Americans were next.

REFERENCE::
Gonzalez, Paul D.: "Appropriation of Culture" www.hanksville.org/sand/stereotypes/gonzalez.html