Last week the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA as it is better known, issued a ruling essentially banning schools with Indian-themed mascots from post-season play. Team names or nicknames deemed “hostile or abusive” to Native Americans were also banned from appearing on any uniform or associated clothing during the post-season, beginning Feb. 1. Teams will still be allowed to take the field, however, provided they remove their team names, leave the mascot in the bus and agree to display a very guilty look on their face for the entire game.
Presumably, teams with redacted names on their jerseys will be allowed to play on a “shirts vs. redskins” system. Oh wait, now I’ll never be allowed to play in the Sugar Bowl. Dang. Next week, I fully expect the NCAA to appoint Ward Churchill as its President and officially change its name to the PC-NCAA.
Because the whole pronouncement was apparently not absurd enough on its own, NCAA Committee Chairman Walter Harrison added that it wasn’t really a ban on mascots, since it only applied to post-season play and that during the regular season, "what each institution decides to do is really its own business.”
Yeah. So Florida State can be the “Seminoles” during the regular season and then “The team formerly known as the ‘Seminoles’” for any bowl games or tournaments. That should work out well.
If using Indians as team symbols really were originally intended as an effort to degrade or belittle Indians, or had that actual effect, I might not think the whole thing were as ludicrous and half-witted as I do. But the fact is that the use of Indians as symbols is a compliment. The only people offended by it are the racial grievance industry and a bunch of white, middle-class pantywaists, both of which would have found something else to whine about had they not invented this imbecilic non-issue.
People do not name their team “The Losers”, “The Drooling Slack-jaws” or “The Heartworms”. People name their teams after things they admire or wish to be like. Mascots connote power, speed, fierceness, tenacity or nobility. That is why many teams end up with names like ‘Gators, Tigers, Wolverines, Bulldogs and Eagles. Are we to believe that Georgia Tech is seeking to embarrass or marginalize Yellow Jackets? (Granted, Techies are Evil, but they are probably not malicious toward Hymenopteran-Americans.)
No one in his right mind (which excludes the PC crowd right off, doesn’t it?), would imagine that a group would seek to belittle something by admiring it, yet that is exactly what is being alleged by the proponents of the idea that Indian mascots are hurtful. Are Indians unique as human-themed mascots? Not in the least. If you believe that Illinois being the “Illini” is a grievous wrong and dehumanizing, then you have to also believe that the people of Boston hate the Irish -so much they named their basketball team after them. Does Ole Miss disrespect Rebels? Do Minnesotans degrade the Vikings? And what are we to make of the Spartans, the Trojans, the Yankees, the Steelers, the Oilers, the Orangemen, the Cavaliers, the Kings, the Cowboys, the Packers, the Bills, the Raiders, the Patriots and dozens of other teams? Have we all been wounded by such homages?
The Indian peoples were chosen for mascots in so many places in America because they are admired. They have been romanticized in the foundation mythology of the nation as noble and special. They have been internalized by the culture that fought them as part of our shared national identity. They represent independence, freedom, fierceness, courage, endurance and uniqueness of place. And if you have to be defined, that’s not a bad set of words to be defined by. It is hardly hostile or abusive.
Teams wish to perform in the arena as fiercely as Knights, Spartans, Pirates, or Braves. Or at least they did. For now the grievance industry is redefining Indians out of that pantheon. Strong, brave, principled, independent and fearless can now be replaced with easily-wounded, oversensitive, whiny, victim-movement copycats. Native Americans thus pass from the mythology of America into the pathology of America –along with the rest of us. When such symbols are pulled down in the name of helping the symbolized, what part of them will be left in the popular culture? What reason will anyone have to ponder them? How will one life be improved?
The whole thing is intellectually rotten and morally pointless, which puts it well in the mainstream of the current politics of hallowed victimization.
By the way, I wonder if it has ever occurred to the NCAA that they are headquartered in Indian-apolis? Oh, the humanity.
