Offensive team names
Keith Law has a great article at ESPN's Page 2 imploring baseball to really honor Jackie Robinson by making the Indians and Braves change their names. I have always been a proponent of this. Native American people and culture are regularly abused and stereotyped and generalized. If this was done with ANY other ethnic group, there would be RIOTS. And no, it is NOT honoring them.
I'm only writing this because I'm too depressed to think about the Pirate's loss tonight. That is all.
5 comments:
UMass use to be the Redmen until a tribe in Upstate New York asked the University to change the name in the 1970s. The School agreed with the tribe that it was wrong and asked students to come up with potential names. The student body then selected the Minuteman to be the new mascot in a general vote.
I think one of the two teams should change their name to the Blue Sox to complete the patriotic trio. I really wanted the Expos to become the Blue Sox when they moved to Washington but they screwed it up. I suppose since the Red and White Sox play in the AL, the Indians should become the Blue Sox, making it truly the American League. And since the Braves use to play in Boston, perhaps they can become the Minutemen...
I really don't see what is offensive about the Braves. I will give you that Chief Wahoo is horribly racist. The article never once mentioned why the Braves were such an offensive name. It seems ironic that he called out teams for stereotyping Native Americans and spent all his time on the Redskins and the Indians. Seems like he just lumped the Braves in with the other two teams merely because they had a Native American nickname.
He didn't say anything about the Cheifs either, though I guess that's more respectful... kind of like the Senators...
But his point, unless I missed it, was that any team with an Indian mascot was wrong.
I am with jon the greater on Braves being unfairly lumped in and see them along the same line as the Chiefs. Chief Wahoo, however, is right up there with the Fightin' Irish mascot as the most caricatured racial stereotype...any Irishmen ever get enflamed over Notre Dame's mascot, who looks like a drunken fighter typically stereotyped of Irish? I've always been curious about that one.
Sometimes I think this stuff can go a bit far...it may have been slightly different circumstances, but when the Bullets changed their name to the Wizards a few years back that seemed a bit overreactive to me. Where are the Scandinavians in an uproar over the Vikings mascot--pretty barbaric, right?
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