CSotD: A silly Sunday topic
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Sunday seemed like the right day to tackle (heh) the issue of racist names, or at least one in particular.
It's a sort of evergreen issue, so some of these cartoons are not from today or even the past week, which is how editorial cartoons are generally handled here. But none of the arguments are new at all, so there ya go.
Our lead-off cartoon is by Milt Priggee and is not only not new but, in fact, never ran at all. When he drew it a quarter century ago, his editors spiked it as "racist." Well, yes. All six names, or just the first five?
It's back in the news again because the people who are offended by the name bring it up again every football season, which is as annoying as those people who kept complaining about not being served at the Woolworth lunch counter after we told them it wasn't a problem for most of our customers.
In fact, one of "those people," Keith Knight, was complaining about this problem in June:
Here's a funny thing about June and Redskins: Until recently, they held their summer training camp in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Well, it's funny to me, anyway. Carlisle was the site of the Carlisle Indian School, where young savages were sent to have their names changed, their religion changed to Christian, their long hair cut and their culture otherwise wiped out. And it produced Jim Thorpe, All-American, and some other athletes, but it also produced a graveyard of dead kids and a lot of bitter feelings.
It wasn't the only place that sort of thing happened, but, then again, Auschwitz wasn't the only concentration camp, either. The name "Carlisle" has a particular resonance in Indian Country.
It was long ago and Steve Breen is right: Those days are over and it's time to step up.
We can debate the Chiefs and the Warriors — heck, I know Mohawks who call themselves Warriors and they aren't kidding — but "redskin" is usually preceded by "dirty" or "thieving" or "lying" and is the N-word for Indians.
Rick Reilly wrote a tiresome column on the topic, explaining that the name isn't offensive and even dragging in my alma mater, Notre Dame, to show that, if "the Fighting Irish" doesn't offend people, "Redskins" couldn't possibly, either. It's an argument that depends on "Irish" being a racial slur, which I didn't know it was.
(We'll discuss that freaking leprechaun another time.)
His commentary did not go unnoticed on the Rez, where Marty Two Bulls penned this response, but where the real blow came from a Blackfeet elder named Bob Burns, whose daughter is married to Reilly and whom Reilly cited:
"The whole issue is so silly to me," says Bob Burns, my wife's father and a bundle holder in the Blackfeet tribe. "The name just doesn't bother me much. It's an
issue that shouldn't be an issue, not with all the problems we've got in
this country."
Burns responded with a column in Indian Country Today explaining what he had told his son-in-law:
What I actually said is that “it’s silly in this day and age that
this should even be a battle — if the name offends someone, change it.”
He failed to include my comments that the term “redskins” demeans
Indians, and historically is insulting and offensive, and that I firmly
believe the Washington Redskins should change their name.
When Rick’s article came out, it upset me to be portrayed as an
“Uncle Tom” in support of this racial slur. I asked him to correct the
record. He has not, so I must do it myself.
I don't know how much time Reilly has spent talking to his wife's family, but I've learned that Indians, as a whole, seem to take a pretty pragmatic view of things.
Example: I was researching the history of a white settlement on the fringe of Akwesasne and had trouble locating the founder's house. I finally found it and was talking to the current owner, a Mohawk. I said, "Didn't there used to be a historic highway marker here?" and he said, "Oh, yeah. They took it down when they widened the road and never put it back up." He paused, then added, "It was a real pain to mow around."
More to the point, I've never met an Indian who preferred the term "Native American," and most of them take the point of view that it's a silly topic.
Many don't feel there would be a need for a term that encompasses Navajos, Tlingit, Oneidas and Seminoles if we would simply give them back their land, but that, barring that unlikely event, "Indian" works just fine.
Others note that the "politically correct" term simply invites idiots to say, "Well, I was born here, so I guess I'm a native American, too!"
But there is also a bit of droll Indian humor in some of these arguments. I asked a Saginaw friend once if I should use the American term "Chippewa" or the Canadian term "Ojibway," and he replied that it really didn't matter. "Most
times that the name is written on a piece of paper, it's because you're
taking something else away from us."
In any case, it's not likely to change anytime soon. As Lee Judge notes, the commissioner doesn't have a problem with the name.
Green talks louder than red, which is nothing new in our history, but it's kind of sad at the same time.
The commissioner has a long-standing-in-the-doorway policy on this matter, as I noted with this inexpert Photoshop commentary on the topic two months ago.
The culturally rich communities where not everyone could get served at the lunch counter were equally proud of their heritage, Roger, and here's something else from that branch of history:
Back when FDR fought a Depression by creating jobs, writers fanned out across America taking down oral histories for the WPA, and later historians have found a flaw in the process when it came to talking to former slaves about their lives.
Aside from having lived under Jim Crow, these elderly Southerners were very polite, and weren't about to tell the nice, earnest young white college graduate anything terribly nasty about their experience. They didn't praise the peculiar institution, but they held back, which means revisionists can pull up their oral histories as proof that "it wasn't so bad."
(WPA writer Ralph Ellison got a different tone in his interviews up North that make an interesting contrast.)
It's not a case of comparing apples and oreos. It's a matter of good manners and of a choice by some people of maintaining their pride by keeping some thoughts to themselves.
Bottom line is that, if Rick Reilly or Roger Goodell or Dan Snyder think that they're getting the straight scoop from the people they ask, they are living in the land of "Mistah Charley, he treat me good."
If you take that polite fiction at face value, well, Tom Toles says it all.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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