Rajin’ Cajun

Nothing strikes fear into the opposing team like "The Orange"!

By the way, Don, I was about to get all victimized/offended at your stereotyping of Cajuns, until I remembered that your last name was Boudreaux and assumed that you were probably more Cajun than I was (only a "worthless half-breed" here). But hey, if anyone who's *not* Cajun uses the same language, you go and get 'em, would ya? ;-)

(I'm *so* offended as a part of some collectivist "identity group," probably because I find myself having no worth as a person; that is, as an individual)

Political Correctness can cause financial crisis and big laughs!

If it be any comfort to the Council of Extremely Sensitive Americans, I think my high school can claim the most non-offensive mascot of them all; it was a potato. I'm not kidding. The Ridgefield "Spudders." The elementary school was the Tater Tots.

Read to the bottom of the story. Violence is the real reason that some folks object to naming teams after Indians:
"Clif Morton, of the Wisconsin Indian Education Association Mascot and Logo task force, offered what could be called the "locker test." Say it's homecoming, and your high school team is known as "the Tribe." How do you decorate your locker?
Too often, he said, lockers are covered with tomahawks, spears or generic profiles of Indians that have nothing to do with the specific history of any tribe and perpetuate a warlike stereotype. "
Can't give Indians a warlike stereotype, can we? They were peaceful acorn-eaters and tree-huggers until the Europeans came and made them out to be savages.

And sir,

How could it be possible for warlike images be conjured up for the peaceful debate and marshmallow toasting kum-ba-yah of a football game? How inappropriate, eh? LOL, good points, sir.

Maybe the football team should go into the game wearing shirts with the image of a big eyed papoose holding a flower and kissing his puppy.

Please some one victimize me so I can complain and get special treatment.

Sorry professor, but you don't get to decide what is offensive to other people. I agree that most of the time there doesn't appear to be any malice behind a team name (Tribe seems pretty benign,) but what about the mascots prancing around as caricatures of the race, playing up to dated stereotypes and such. Your analogies are extremely weak and rather unoriginal in terms of this debate, though I must admit I've never heard anyone compare such things to naming a child after a descendent.

And wow, vidyohs does a nice job illustrating to everyone what its like to show unabashed racism. Its amazing to me that people in this country are still so outwardly racist toward Native Americans. It seems its still socially acceptable to make overtly racisty comments about this race and somehow feel justified in doing it.

Sorry professor, but you don't get to decide what is offensive to other people.

Why does the professor not get to decide what's offensive to me, but Gloria Steinem does?

Solidus,

You are a confirmation of what Don addressed, and I opined on.

Both Don and I get great big smiley faces for knowing WTF we are talking about, and you get a nasty red X.

By choosing to look at both our posts in that "ready to be offended" shallow narrow minded and incredibly naive manner you chose, you merely validate us.

Specious accusations of racism will not chase me away from making intelligent observations based on long experience in both seeing, hearing, studying, and discussions.

Mention the word Indian or words native American and have not most anglos been enculturated to automatically think of the noble warrior on a horse riding across the plains with his flowing headdress of feathers. Yes.

Well there is a lot more to native America than the plains warrior.

Is the reminder that the term "native Americans" includes the crazed Aztec priest ripping a heart from a victim also a valid representation of the term? Yes. Is it racist to do so? No, unless you're in the pursuit of victimhood with the specious claim.

Is it racist to also insert the reminder that the term "native American" also includes the desperately poor Ute woman of old, who lived in an area of extreme hardship in both acquiring food and shelter? No, unless you're looking to advance victimhood with the specious claim.

Is there a huge variety of different examples of native American culture from Tierra Del Fuego to Point Barrow, from the San Francisco Bay to Cape Cod, and all points in between throughout a long and colorful history? Yes. And, I have spent much of my adult life in study of life in the Americas prior to the coming of CC, so I am well aware of the latest theories and discoveries.

I just hate the deceptive simpering dishonesty you portray at the first sign of truths.

It is jerk-offs like you that make every attempt to eliminate honest discussion on things like race, that are the problem. It doesn't take a lot of guts or intellect to cover your face and insert ear plugs and pretend things are just as you wish them to be.

Have a nice day, sweetie.

Thank you for explicating this well. Racism takes the form of romanticization, as well. Rarely do the politically correct admit the implicite racism that underlies their conceptualization of aboriginal Americans and African Americans as so-called "noble savages" or noble "primitives" who somehow magically possess a truer, more spiritual, more sensual or more natural relationship with the universe and the human condition. This conceptualization is one more symptom of the racism underlying the lumping of each distinct aboriginal group with all the rest and the attribution of specific characteristics to that group. By the way, Native Americans don't need another hero, and I'm so sick of politically correct people like Solidus arrogantly standing up and acting like they are going to be the one person to "save" a victimized people. Guess what, Solidus, the only people that can save them are themselves, and thanks to the free market, some of them are doing just that and doing it well on their own without your help. Thank you very much.

I don't think he claimed to speak for other people - just himself.

Ugh - don't get me started. When I was at William and Mary, the NCAA made us change our mascot, which was "The Tribe" (kind of a weird one, I know).

The local indian tribe - the Mattaponi - had absolutely zero problem with us using the name. And moreover, the NCAA didn't make a similar request of the Florida State seminoles. I think you're on target with your opening anecdote - these stupid decisions start with disgruntled letter writers, and the people that receive the letters are too afraid not to address it. That's bad enough that they cave to that kind of pressure, but what's worse is that that means changes get only selectively applied.

Ha! I'm just waiting for some gay rights group to take issue with UVA's cavalier.

Then some stoned PETA guy will start a campaign to change all the "Tigers", "lions", "Bears", etc.

Also this -
http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=12484

This was the one I was looking for initially :)

Oh, you don't have to wait for the PETA protest!

http://www.peta.org/campaigns/schoolmascot.asp

Come on - you underestimates those guys if you don't think they're already on top of this :-D

"Should the French interpret the Saints’ emblem – a fleur de lis – as a grande insulte?"

Umm, no, but the House of Bourbon might take umbrage with it being used as a symbol for something named after the House of Orleans.....

It has said that the "blogosphere has disproven the concept of 1000 monkeys on typewriters would eventually produce quality works".

You've read Yasafi's posts, too?

Stop cluing people in to their idiocy. I use dumb statements as litmus tests to minimize my interactions with stupid people.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/05/28/101-...

White people love to be offended... =]

Yes
No
Get over it.

It happened, it's over, it's history, and there is only one first place at the victim trough in the USA and it isn't native Americans.

BTW, just WTF is a native American? I am a native American. No Mongolian blood in me what so ever, that I know of. No Chinese blood, or a mix of Mongolian and Chinese. Yet I was born on the soil of Texas, that makes me a native American even though my ancestors arrived a tad behind some others.

Is the native American a chiseled warrior sitting on a horse, war bonnet flowing behind him, over looking the plains? Or is it a crazed Aztec Priest atop a pyramid, holding a still beating heart fresh cut from a victim sacrifice? Or, perhaps a Ute squaw dressed in bare fibers, standing in front of her stick hut in the Utah desert, with a basket of seeds and insects with which she will make supper for her family?

IMHO it is all about the fight for first place at the public trough.

I agree. The proper term is Aboriginal American.

I wonder what it'd be like if squatter moved in your backyard while you were away for a spell? Suppose the mother gave birth to twins and argues "not only are her babies 'native' Americans but they are also 'vidyohsian' Americans as well and as such the babies have a claim to your backyard.

I'd probably just tax 'em.

Gil,

What about the squatters that moved in, say 100 years after the first people crossed the Bering Strait?

Canadians is nothing. How about the Vancouver Canucks? The San Diego Padres should insult all Catholics. Don't get me started on the Fighting Irish or the Celtics! How about the Idaho Vandals -- a clear attack on those of Germanic descent. Or the many colleges and high schools with the anti-Scotch nickname, Highlanders. I never realized how offended I was.

"Or the many colleges and high schools with the anti-Scotch nickname, Highlanders."

There can be only one.

Your examples are good ones (and funny), and certainly our society has become very over-sensitive.

But surely you can see how people can be offended by team names such as "The Redskins", with a big emblem of a Native American?

So What?

As Don pointed out, people are offended by any number of things. People who are easily offended should be offended, and often.

Small bit of trivia: the team's name is actually the "Canadiens", which is French for Canadians.

hey don, people are entitled to feeling offendend and talking about it... its part of their freedoms... is that offending you?

let it be dude, let it be... you seem to take these kind of sensible people waaay too seriously... really

What's wrong with him taking offense to their offense... and talking about it? It's part of *his* freedom... is that offending you? ;-)