It is fascinating that at one time these teams were named after native Americans (Red Skins, Chiefs, Warriors, Indians, Browns, etc.) and their tribes (Blackhawks, Seminoles, etc.) as a way to honor things we admired. Now they are seen as racist even thought the Seminole tribe likes the honor and was consulted before settling on the mascot name.
With so many real issues, I just can't get all invested in defending something that large groups of people now feel is offensive so I am all for the name changes.
What I find very offensive is there are words you can I cannot say only because of our skin color while they are used regularly in music and TV/streaming shows by people of the allowed color or allowed mix of colors. I am speaking of the N word and its many variations... A show last night had a black police commander take offense to a punk who used it with the "a" ending rather than "er." The cop nearly hit the scumbag white person who then said, "I used an "a" at the end, I thought that was OK?"
We are NEVER going to have equality if we have "separate but unequal" languages, customs, requirements to get into a top college, etc...
I don't even want to go into the statistics that show white interactions with violent, brutal cops end in death at a higher rate than with blacks... that is a whole different issue where some go into law enforcement because it is a way that they thought they could brutalize others and get away with it. A good friend of mine told me how after he got out of the service after the Vietnam war that one of the guys in his group went into a local police department in a major city here and told him it was because he could legally beat the crap out of people. It would not surprise me to see it as an attractive profession for "bullies" so they would benefit from better screening of applicants. |
