Essay On Non-Indian Mascots

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It can also be said that the discourse of honor resulted in misunderstood or misidentified Native Americans speaking out on behalf of the mascots. Many of those who spoke out in favor of the mascots were found to be “self-proclaimed” Native Americans. These people were maybe one-sixteenth Native American or confusedly said to be related to a Native American chief or princess. The article by Pauline Strong supports this idea stating “given this pattern of socialization, many non-Indians come to feel deeply invested in Indian mascots... Such an emotional investment is a form of White privilege akin to that analyzed more generally by George Lipsitz (1998). In identifying themselves with pseudo-Indian symbols, non Indians come to feel authorized to appropriate and even to profit from these symbols as well as to …show more content…

The honoring through recognition that these non-Indians seek to achieve is not attainable through faint attempts to misrepresent a culture they barely know. In I’m Indian Too!: Claiming Native American Identity, Crafting Authority in Mascot Debates by Charles Springwood, “the mascot protesters who claim Indianness are staging what is perhaps a novel form of anti-Indianism because their claims are designed to silence what may be a common, if not majority opinion, among Native Americans about the uses and abuses of Indian imagery in contemporary American movement.” Native Americans who protest the use of these symbols in sports media see the opinions of non-Indians as uncreditable because they are rooted out of emotion and the defense of societal comfort. The fans of these teams love their mascots and these symbols are what has brought our team together, but do not understand how they offend the heritage of those that they falsely represent and bring little honor

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