Native American Mascots: Legitimate Complaint or Overly Sensitive

In recent years there has been a major uproar over the use of Native American tribes and characters as mascots for athletic teams. Teams like the North Dakota Fighting Sioux, Florida State Seminoles, Illinois Fighting Illini, and the Central Michigan Chippewas have been under extreme scrutiny and pressure from individuals who believe it is wrong for them to have these mascots. The criticism does not specifically focus on collegiate athletics. The NFL's Washington Redskins and Kansas City Chiefs have been criticized, along with the MLB's Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians and the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks.

In 2006, the NCAA banned the use of Native American mascots during post-season tournaments. This ban still allowed them to be used in other non post-season events. These teams a even the NCAA still face large amounts of public scrutiny over their mascots. Some schools have even be completely abandoned their Native American mascots to appease these critics. Syracuse University changed their mascot from "Orangemen" to the "orange". Stanford University changed their name from "Indians" to "the cardinal". Illinois changed their name from "the Fighting Illini" to simply the "Illini".


The only question to ask is WHY? People claim that these mascots are demeaning and stereotyping the native Americans. People claim that these mascots are racist and give native Americans a negative image. What these people fail to realize is that these mascots give them the ability to be noticed when otherwise they wouldn't. These ridiculous claims are completely unmerited and are a dynamic search for special privileges that others do not receive. For example, Norte Dame University has the mascot of the Fighting Irish. No one is up in arms about them having this mascot that is obviously very stereotypical of a particular people group. It gives the negative and false representation of Irish as being drunken brawlers, but no one even bats an eye at this mascot even though it is doing the exact thing that they claim that Native American mascots are doing. The University of Louisiana Lafayette has the mascot of the Ragin' Cajun's which also has stereotypical and racial overtones and yet they have received minimal if any criticism for their ethnically motivated mascots.



The singling out of only athletic teams that have mascots that are of Native American origin is simply the result of people being overly sensitive and because of that sensitivity those people then seek out special privileges for their people group that no other people group has. The self-victimize themselves and create a negative idea or mentality out of something that specifically has to do with mainly a school or teams geographic location. It would be different if the current push was to eliminate all mascots that stereotype a particular group of people but that is simply not happening and since they are not eliminating all people groups it is completely unfair to eliminate just one. Equality is a simple idea, and needs to be implemented as such. True equality is people groups being treated equally no matter what.