Word: mascot
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Even more aptly, the UMass mascot is a Minuteman. Were all Revolutionary-era Massachusetts residents soldiers, violent dispensers of rebel justice with rifles drawn and bayonets affixed? Of course not. Yet no one complains in these cases, because the subjects belong to the culturally-dominant ethnic group...
...nomadic Plains people, under the heading “fighting,” or the extraction of visual generalizations from group names, did Harper consider the Big Green men’s hoops team’s first two opponents in 2006, George Washington and Massachusetts? The GW Colonials mascot is a presidential look-alike in a powdered wig and breeches. Is the implication that all American colonists were white and wealthy? Because that belittles the poor artisans and black slaves...
...Crimson’s news coverage of this story last week quoted the executive director of the Harvard University Native American Program: “It is inappropriate to have these mascots representing native people—they don’t.” The idea that a mascot should be an accurate representation is absurd. That would be the end of mascots. Sports is the domain of the generality and the cliché. UND is a stupid school with a stupid nickname. Why make more of its mascot than that...
...component. I almost forgot. She continued: “I think they are legacies of stereotypes and really portray native peoples in caricatures. It’s part of an American myth that we need to rectify.” Kind of like how George Washington’s mascot portrays colonial people in caricature and UMass promulgates the myth of the Minutemen? Where’s the rectification brigade on that...
...forbid we should look to the positive side of a Native American mascot: the acknowledgement of regional predecessors or the ideal of a courageous spirit and physical prowess that the teams in question hope to emulate...