fox@fury
Banning Indians: Missing the point, or more ethnic clensing?
Thursday, May 16, 2002 @ 10:39pm
Follow my train of thought for this evening:
  1. California may force schools to drop Indian mascots - The move, promoted by Native American tribesmen, is intended to protect the dignity of the American Indian heritage, by forbiding schools to promote it. Braves, Chiefs, Apaches, and Comanches are all among the 'offensive' labels that would be forbidden.
  2. Conquistadores!I went to Gaspar de Portola Middle School. No, my old school wouldn't be affected by the ban, because our mascots weren't any for of Indians. Our mascot was the Conquistador.
  3. Portola-the-school has a strict mandate of nondiscrimination.
  4. Gaspar de Portola, as the Spanish Governor of the Californias, in the 1760s, "was responsible for expelling the Jesuits from Baja California, where they had established 14 missions in 72 years."
  5. The conquistadores proper, Spanish explorers turned gold-hunting entrepenuers, braving the New World, were acknowledged bringers of torture and genocide, killing literally hundreds of thousands of Native Americans in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

But apparently naming a school's mascot after a Native American tribe is more offensive than naming one after the group of people that committed mass genocide against them.

Just so long as we all have our priorities firmly in place.

Lastly, I leave you with a stunning example of irony. At least somebody has the right perspective.

image

Aboutme

Hi, I'm Kevin Fox.
I've been blogging at Fury.com since 1998.
I can be reached at .

I also have a resume.

recentWork

As a user experience designer for Google, I led the design of Gmail 1.0, Google Calendar 1.0, and Google Reader 2.0.

Searchfury
backMatter

All my opinions are belong to me.

©2008 Kevin Fox

Subscribe to Fury.com