it’s been financial suicide for the colleges who’ve gotten rid of their Indian mascots… Stanfurd in particular. Totally confused the alumni and they certainly don’t donate to their alma mater.

So you’re saying changing the name of your team is tantamount to economic suicide … unless you have good players? Should be no problem for Cleveland and Atlanta then, right?

Sifting through all the sophistry and incoherence in your posts is a bit of a chore, so I’ll just take issue with one particularly silly assertion, and leave the rest to fade quietly into the blogospheric abyss:

I lived in DC when the Bullets became the Wizards, and I can say without equivocation that fans did not flee in droves because their jerseys were suddenly outdated or the new team colors sucked.

Things that do not constitute evidence of name change-induced franchise disarray:

1. Conversations with your friends in which you all agree the new name is stupid
2. Disgruntled WTEM drive time callers

In fact, attendance went up in 97-98, the year of the name change, due mostly to the afterglow of the prior year playoff appearance and the opening of the Verizon Center. But that season was a massive disappointment, Webber was traded, the team returned to bottom-feeding status, and voilà, attendance sunk by 50% the following year. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the name change. It had everything to do with the product on the court and the yawning chasm between expectations and results.

Attendance and franchise value began to climb during the Jordan years, despite the team’s mediocre on-court performance. Perhaps you were distressed by his “politicking”, but lots (and lots and lots) of people bought game tickets and #23 Wizards jerseys.

Never has the arena been as consistently packed as it was during the two years Jordan played, but franchise value has continued to appreciate, and now stands at an all-time high. Boy, that name change really screwed Abe Polin over, didn’t it?

Links:

Attendance
Valuation

your assumptions are as impressive as your hyperbole about the country being destroyed.

it was bears that were destroying the country, or possibly the bossa nova.

But I digress.

“THEY ARE ONLY MASCOTS”

Does this mean you endorse any ethnic or racial caricature, so long as it’s, you know, just a mascot?

How about this:

Or this:

Acceptable mascots? Or do they go too far? I’m curious to know where you suggest we draw the line.

that’s hilarious…you thought that 149 was concerned that Indian mascots/team nicknames/imagery etc could be offensive to non-Indian people, didn’t you? (To anyone who missed this, read 149’s comment and then kmoasfan’s response, it’s fairly obvious. Well, the quote from the girlfriend’s grandfather confounds things a bit, but that actually served as an aside here…or as just another thought in a careless post (careless on a couple levels)). I guess I just have to echo PT here (can’t believe I just said that) and just leave it at “wow.” Well, ok…the point that should not need making is that the problem people have is that the mascots and the like are potentially offensive to Indians themselves. The difference between, say, the “Indians” and the “Spartans” is that there isn’t a large portion of the American population that directly traces its roots back to ancient Sparta. More accurately, in order for “Spartan” to be reasonably considered an offensive nickname, you’d probably have to have a group of people who not only are of Spartan origin but would also be offended by the notion that their ancestors were primarily warriors. And for that imaginary subset of 2008 America, well, they’d have to come to grip with the facts (that Sparta was in fact the Greek city-state that engaged in the most warfare). There is no parallel here or in the others you offered.

And the name of your local pro ball team obviously didn’t inspire you to do much research on Native American history if all you can associate them with is casinos. Which, by the way, don’t seem to put fastest-growing-metro-area-in-the-US-and-still-possible-future-home-of-the-A’s Las Vegas in that negative of a light, do they? Go to the southwest sometime….

What tribe is this “Indian” representing? Unless you can name the tribe it’s representing, then you make my points for me about what’s offensive about images of “Indians” used as team mascots. But you’re right about one thing, they are “only mascots”; which, again, makes my point. If all that is known about Indian peoples is these images tightly associated with sports teams (or casinos) , that’s a giant problem.

Oh just one questions about casinos… Does anyone know how Tribes came to have casinos in the first place? You don’t think Indian people invented casinos do you? Plus 20 points to whomever can answer.

Here’s a list of resolutions by North Dakota tribal governments and organizations asking UND to drop its nickname. They include:

“United Sioux Tribes Development Corporation”
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Chair
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, Chair
Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe
Oglala Sioux Tribe
Rosebud Sioux Tribe
Yankton Sioux Tribe
Crow Creek Sioux Tribe
Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe
Native Media Center
Three Affiliated Tribes

LOL, I was referring to the “stolen land” as in are you for real, anyone who picked up a 3rd grade textbook knows what happened. If you want to get really technical, we can make the argument that animals were on our continent before “indians” were. Do you feel bad about them slaughtering animals for food? What makes “indians” or any other human being different than animals? Is it the fact that we can think intelligently and they can’t? You wouldn’t go slaughtering a mentally challenged person just because they were incapable of intelligent thought, so why is it okay to slaughter animals?

No, I’m not calling “indians” animals or condoning the slaughter of any group of people but the ridiculous argument of a cartoon “indian” mascot being offensive is just as ridiculous as my argument I just brought up with animals. We can either embrace what little is left of their culture, even if it is through mascots, or we can completely erase what little attention they have in the national spot light.

You know if it’s that bothersome to you, nobody is forcing you to watch teams play with an “indian” mascot, if you’re that sensitive maybe you should just learn to ignore the mascot.

I was planning to spend some time this morning continuing the argument above, but you covered it all here, and with far more precision and lucidity than I would have. So I’m spared the trouble, and will not now have my morning coffee corrupted by the masochistic exercise of refuting inanities.

Nicely done.

the Iroquois, and (as I indicated in another post in this thread) I think their influence on American history is generally underappreciated. Nevertheless, I’m unconvinced by this argument.

I’ve read several papers making the case that the U.S. system of government was based on the Iroquois federation model, but in my view the evidence just doesn’t support it. Yes, there are some similarities, but they are exaggerated. The debates leading up to the constitution are extremely well documented and one has to scrape very hard to come up with even a shred of evidence for being inspired by the Iroquois. Similarities does not prove inspiration. I could make an equally solid case that the U.S. system of government was inspired by Renaissance Poland.

There’s room for debate on exactly how small the influence is, but I don’t think you can say it’s “a fact” that the American system was “heavily based” on the Iroquois model. It’s not.

then what’s the argument against getting rid of Indian mascots? Let’s just do it then… If the informed arguments against Indian mascots don’t impress you, then let’s just get rid of them for shits and giggles.

Not all Indians are offended by the mascots.

Jackie Robinson did not “transcend baseball” any more than he “transcended” race. Please, INFORM your opinions!!! I’m begging you! I know it’s a pain in the ass, but at least you won’t brand yourself an idiot. So it’s kinda worth it, in the long run. I’ll help you out, because I care. Check out “What’s My Name Fool: Sports and Resistance in the United States”.

I love your smug tone, you say that anyone who does not agree with your view point must be ignorant. You must love the smell of your own farts too. I know not every indian lives on a reservation but there is a large number that do. Did I ever state that I felt all Indians live on reservations? No, I simply stated some of the problems that occur on these reservations. So thank you for drawing your own conclusions and assuming stuff that was not written.

MBP, you were the one who brought up the fact that Indian mascots have little or nothing directly to do with the quality of life on Indian reservations as an argument against changing them. This struck me as a bad argument, especially as nobody is suggesting that getting rid of Indian mascots will improve life on reservations. The most charitable reading of your argument was that you believed that improving life on reservations was the same thing as helping Native Americans. Hence my response.

And just to be clear: I am not in favor of banning team mascots that I find offensive.

I am in favor of banning team mascots that are found to be offensive by the groups they purport to depict. In the case of Native American mascots, what matters are not my feelings, but the feelings of Native Americans.

What would it change? Native Americans believe that most Americans have little contact with Indians and that the stereotyped images represented by the mascots provide many Americans with their only image of Indianness. Getting rid of Indian mascots would make it less likely that non-Native Americans would completely misunderstand Indian cultures and societies.

OK, but what do you THINK (assuming you are willing to do so)? Taking your “research” as 100% accurate (a tough call, but OK), why NOT name the team after the Chief by using his NAME? My questions don’t just make the story suspect. The questions exactly identify the problems with using “Indians” as mascots. They erase history and contemporary identities, including the names of the people and tribes, they purport to represent.

IMO neither Cleveland nor Atlanta (nor KC, nor DC, nor UIUC, nor FSU, nor UND) took their names to honor a specific Indian person, tribe, or Indian people generally. I believe that non-Indians (and some Indians) have stereotypes in their heads (both positive and negative) of Indian people. These stereotypes are “translated” into images, icons, mascots. The images stand for the stereotypes which stand-in for the real, complex, varied Indian persons, tribes, and Indian people generally. Hence, my comment above that one of the negative results of Indian mascots is the “flattening” of Indian identities and the erasure of real Indian people. It seems like you’d rather have your stereotypes than real Indian people.

IMO, team owners take Indian mascots as marketing tools. Lou Sockalexis was called all kinds of horrible names; people threw food at him during games. That alone sold tickets—people wanted to abuse “The Indian.” (Can you imagine Joba Chamberlain or Jacoby Ellsbury being called “The Indian”? Blessedly, some progress has been made.) But Sock was also an amazing phenomenon of a ballplayer. People couldn’t believe that an Indian could play ball like Lou did, they had to see it for themselves. So Lou out-performing racist expectations of Indians sold tickets. Others just hadn’t seen an Indian “close up” so they went to see what “one” looked like. Racism is profitable, but that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it OK. In fact, it makes it worse because people are making money of the pain of others.

Tamanend is best known as a lover of peace and friendship who played a prominent role in the establishment of peaceful relations among the Native American tribes and the English settlers

That image of the Lenape man must have been “rendered” in the Summer. Not good attire for a New Jersey winter. :-D Also the image doesn’t compare favorably with the description of Lenape dress in your third link. Just FYI.

and will probably regret my comment as soon as I hit post, I find it funny that somone who is so passionate about respecting the perception of ethnic groups and is not in favor of mascots portraying sterotypical images would choose for his name and avatar such a blatantly offensive Italian image. Could you not find the Italian chef guy from the Simpson’s? And as someone with Italian blood, if I find it offensive, that’s what should matter, right?

which IS the point. You don’t know what traditional Seminole dress looks like because you’ve only exposed yourself to the FSA mascot’s representation of traditional Seminole dress.

This is what traditional Seminole dress looks like for men:

Who said the Seminoles are being ridiculed? Did you fart that thought? Please do yourself a favor and read the other posts on why Indian mascots should be eradicated. Some mascots are ridiculous, it’s true (CLE, ATL, DC, KC). But there are broader, deeper issues that make even “respectful” mascots a net negative. There are plenty of Seminole people who disagree with the tribal position, which is why they voted on it. The vote supported the tribal government’s support of FSU mascot. But like all political questions, such democratic outcomes will change, indeed, through education. The Seminoles aren’t stupid. They recognize that having their name associated with a state school with a tradition of strong athletic performance helps them in some important ways. But the benefits accrue mostly to Seminole people, and there is a net loss for American Indians at large, in that use of the Seminole mascot provides an argument for keeping the ridiculous mascots.