by Caroline Sumner

Created on: June 03, 2010

"Why are you so offended by that mascot? We're honoring you by having it!"

This argument has been made time and time again, by sports enthusiasts defending their favorite team's mascot. As a little girl, I once went to a Richmond Braves game. At one point, the entire stadium began making an "axe chop" motion with their arms, representing a tomahawk. I noticed my father was not joining in, and I asked why. "Because," he said. "It's kind of ignorant." Again, I asked why. "We're Cherokee, you know," my father told me.

And suddenly it made sense. I remembered being in kindergarten, when we learned about Native American culture. We sat "Indian style", ate popcorn, and made headdresses out of construction paper during a "powwow", during which we whooped and did a childlike rain dance. This was in 1993. Of course, no one can expect a kindergarten teacher to sit down with a group of five- and six-year-olds and teach an in-depth, completely historically accurate lesson with respect to the varying tribes' traditions, but to teach a group of children that performing war whoops is a way of "honoring" Native American culture is irresponsible.

We see this same irresponsibility with sports mascots. From an early age, children are exposed to these mascots and taught that it is all right to cheer on a team called the Redskins. Of course, no harm is meant by these mascots, sports slogans, or methods of cheering them on - which is actually worse than if they were meant to be offensive. The lines are so blurred by making these inappropriate mascots a "good" thing that it confuses people into believing that borderline-desecrating these Native American traditions is a way of "honoring" a rich culture that has long been abuse by outsiders.

It is one thing to respectfully honor a culture. It is quite another to make fun of it, which is what these mascots are doing. They are caricatures of a people that have already been through a great deal of prejudice. Imagine a sports team that had a mascot that looked like a cartoon version of an African-American person, whose fans dressed in blackface. Such a mascot would be struck down almost immediately. Why, then, do we continue to allow these teams to mock the Native Americans?

It is not about being "politically correct". It is about being morally correct.

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