Jack Shakely's Essay 'Indian Mascots You' Re Out

The majority culture defends use of the Native Americans symbols in sports and many are confused by the objections raised by Native Americans. “Team Names represent something positive to the fans, People don’t name teams after things they hate.” (40 What’s in a Team Name, Banks). For example, the University of Georgia selected the “The Georgia Bulldogs as their Mascot.”(What’s in a Team Name). Their attributes are “toughness...and integrity”(What’s in a Team Name) to their mascot. Teams also look

Let us take a closer look at the Major League Baseball team, The Atlanta Braves. Over the years the team has changed their logo, but one thing has remained constant, the overall concept of the mascot. Today’s logo is displayed with the word Braves with a tomahawk directly below. During games, Braves fans band together to perform what is known as the tomahawk chop, where they cat as if their arms are tomahawks chopping through the air all the while chanting as if they were Indians. This is one of the many ways that the Native American is imitated in a negative may as if being mad a mockery of. Another example of how the American Indian is mocked is how not only are they the only culture to be portrayed as a mascot, but they are also one of the only cultures to be portrayed as a logo on tobacco an alcohol. The chewing tobacco, Red Man, as well as the alcohol brand, Firewater, use the image of the Native American as well as use the slang given to degrade the culture. Each of these franchises have furthered what the early films have begun and not only degraded the culture but made it to where the culture is a non-existent myth that is hidden away on reservations.

Sherman Alexie, in “Indian Education” tells his experiences in school on the reservation. Some of his teachers did not treat him very good and did not try to understand him. In his ninth grade year he collapsed. A teacher assumed that he had been drinking just because he was Native American. The teacher said, “What’s that boy been drinking? I know all about these Indian kids. They start drinking real young.” Sherman Alexie didn’t listen to the negatives in school. He persevered and became valedictorian of his school.

Teams in every sport, at every level of competition, have a mascot. It is the mascot that represents the competitive spirit and team identity, motivating players and fans alike. Does the symbol chosen have any impact on whether a team wins or loses? Unlikely. But the choice of a Native American mascot continues to ignite debate and controversy among athletes, fans and alumni, as well as those people who might otherwise be disinterested in sports. Utilizing an Indian mascot is nothing more than a veiled attempt at hate speech.

Sometime in your life, you have most likely attended a school that had some sort of mascot. These mascots, often animals, are carefully selected to represent not only the school’s competitive teams, but also the whole student body. Mascots are also used to represent professional sports teams. However, the use of Native Americans, an entire race of millions of people, as mascots is extremely insulting and should be banned.

Do you feel having Indian mascots for sports teams take part in racial discrimination? In the sports world, representing a Native American is showing honor and respect. In society, communities take it as offensive and racist towards Native Americans. The government recognizes the positive representation of Indians and has given them more rights than state citizens. Considering the history, what it means, and general attitude, Indian mascots should be allowed.

Roppolo insists, “The real problem with the kind of dysconscous, symbolic, abstract racism that is perpetuated today by sports mascots… is that it enables very real, very concrete, and very conscious acts of violent racism that American Indian people still face in this country and this hemisphere on a daily basis”(228). This demonstrates how the mascot does have a detrimental impact towards Native Americans. People who are subjected to seeing Native Americans through these mascots already have fallacious perceptions of what Native Americans behave like. Due to this, people will start to react accordingly to how they feel the Native Americans are supposed to act due to the distorted stereotypes that are presented to the public. People do not even realize that they are acting this way towards Native Americans, because Roppolo claims that Americans have gotten used to being racist towards Native Americans for so long that it is now invisible, aka dysconscious racism(226). People do not realize that it is ingrained in them, so when they come into contact with a Native American they may perceive the situation different than what actually happened. Roppolo justified this by going on to add, “One young man had his brother nearly beaten to death - his skull cracked open, not just cracked - when several bouncers at a local nightclub had to control his ‘rowdy’

The year is 1991.  The Atlanta Braves had just completed their first trip to the Fall Classic in four decades, and the Washington Redskins were undefeated, well on their way to their third Super Bowl title.  All across the eastern seaboard, sports fans were tasting success - while American Indians were in an uproar.  This year witnessed the peak of the protests over the use of mascots with American Indian themes.  With two of the major professional sports teams in question making front-page news across the country, many of us heard American Indians' complaints for the first time.  Suddenly, thanks to the cries of thousands of demonstrators, the names of many Americans' favorite teams had become synonymous with "nigger."

The controversy over the naming of sports teams after ethnic groups has been boiling since the mid-twentieth century. Sports teams in America, ranging from Pee-wee leagues, high schools, and colleges to Professional sports, have used any enumeration of nick names and mascots by which to represent their team with pride and sometimes even comedy. However, the lines of political correctness have been greatly and maybe even intentionally blurred in terms of the use of specific ethnic groups within team names and the use of the stereotypical image of those teams’ caricatures, the native-American in particular. Of the four major professional sports team franchises included in the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL that do possess ethnic monikers, only two are of Caucasoid based ethnicity, whereas the other 5 are direct references to Native American ethnicity or stereotypes

The dispute over whether Native American mascots should be used as a team symbol dates back to the 1970’s (Price 2). There are those who are passionately against Native American mascots. These advocators insist that Native American mascots are degrading to

     Many people do not consider themselves supporting Native American mascots that depict them in a bad manner. But when people walk around with a Atlanta Braves shirt on with a Indian with a tomahawk in his hand, it is degrading to the Indians. It is stereotyping them. School mascots and Sports team’s mascots are named after groups of people for no reason known. Notre Dame was founded by Irish Catholics, but their sports team was named the Fighting Irish. The name Fighting Irish has nothing to do with the Irish Catholics, it depicts them in a wrong way.(Price, 3). Team names can be changed to similar names that do not depict certain groups of people. Like the Redskins can be called the Red Hawks or the

Former chair of the Los Angeles Native American Commission, Jack Shakley, in his argument, “Indian Mascots-You’re Out!” disputes whether Native American mascots should be allowed to be the face of American sports teams. Shakley’s purpose is to convey the idea that is insensitive to have Native Americans as mascots. Jack Shakley uses a passionate tone to show readers that not only is using a Native American mascot racist, but it is wrong and should be changed to a less offensive mascot. Shakley starts off using pathos to the readers by telling a story from his childhood. In the article, Shakley demonstrates the ability to use strong pathos and logos arguments to support his claims that we should get rid of Native American mascots and steam names.

The Spokane Indians held these "rules" in such high regard that when Junior actually followed these rules and struck his bully in the face, the bully just stood in awe. In Junior 's society the logical thing to do would be to attack when you are highly insulted. But on the contrary, this new society did not follow his rules, nor did they have any of their own. By giving us, the readers, this list the author has strengthened his logos factor in this particular story.

Almost everybody loves going to sporting events and seeing all the excited fans as well as the energized mascots. There has been quite a variety of mascots and logos seen in schools whether it be high schools or colleges and in professional leagues. According to a search done by an ESPN FiveThirtyEight reporter through a database known as MascotDB, out of the 42,624 teams in the database at the time there were 2,129 sports teams that have reference to Native Americans (Munguia). That’s about a five percent of all mascots while Native American only make up roughly two percent of the population of the United States in 2014 (US Census). There has been much debate and controversy around mascots and team names that reference Native American throughout the years and gaining more attention especially with the most public debate regarding National

Many races are unjustly victimized, but Native American cultures are more misunderstood and degraded than any other race. College and high school mascots sometimes depict images of Native Americans and have names loosely based on Native American descent, but these are often not based on actual Native American history, so instead of honoring Native Americans, they are being ridiculed. According to the article Warriors Survive Attack, by Cathy Murillo (2009) some “members of the Carpentaria community defended Native American mascot icons as honoring Chumash tradition and the spirit of American Indian Warriors in U.S. history and others claimed that the images were racist stereotypes” (Murillo, 2009). If people do not attempt to understand