It's time to stop using Native American mascots
Every so often, an issue arises that quickly becomes a flashpoint for vigorous debate among Newsday readers. Of late, such subjects typically are national in nature and rooted in our viciously partisan politics.
The most recent hot topic has a culture war component but with an intensely local flavor – the requirement from the state Board of Education that New York school districts stop using Native American mascots, team names, and imagery.
Newsday’s editorial board quickly weighed in with a simple request that we all think of the effect this practice has on Native American children, observing, “For a while now, we as a society have been more cognizant of the negative consequences of certain actions, whether it’s caricatured mascots or historical treatment of Native Americans.”
Many readers disagreed. Denise Buss of Medford called the new mandate “lunacy” and asked, “Again, why is a small percentage of people with nothing better to do always wanting to erase history and things that show what we were?” Thomas Haas of Massapequa, whose high school teams are nicknamed the Chiefs, wrote that the new policy is “a disgrace, more woke nonsense over a made-up issue.” But Katheryn Twomey of Port Jefferson Station applauded the state Education Department, citing America’s “long and brutal history of slaughter and subjugation of indigenous peoples. It is a symptom of systemic racism that Native American culture continues to be appropriated and exploited in 2022.”
Iris Liu, a senior at Manhasset Secondary School, whose teams are known as the Indians, wrote a satirical piece of fiction reporting that officials had announced that the school’s new mascot would be “White Guy” and that cheerleaders had already started chanting, “Let’s go, White Guys! Let’s go!”
Cynthia Lovecchio of Remsenburg tried to get fellow readers to see the matter from the Native American point of view: “They seem to feel that Native Americans shouldn’t have the right to object to what they view as disparaging terms. I wonder if those readers would be as comfortable if ethnic slurs related to Italians, Germans, or Irish were there instead.”
And op-ed writer John Jeansonne, a former Newsday sports writer, recalled playing 60 years ago for high school teams in California known as the Indians. “We all have had plenty of time, and exposure to protests regarding racial awareness, to acquire an education in the matter,” he wrote, going on to describe the harm these mascots inflict on indigenous people.
Suffice it to say the issue will probably burn for a while. But it’s worth noting that Dartmouth College is the Big Green and St. John’s University is the Red Storm, and the number of people who remember – or care – that they used to be the Indians and the Redmen, respectively, is dwindling. What’s right usually wins in the end.
- Michael Dobie
