Offensive Language In Sports In The Indian Wars By S. L. Price

1473 Words3 Pages

In a generation focused on social justice and the elimination of prejudice from our society, there is still a use of offensive language and terminology in the area of professional sports. In “The Indian Wars” by S. L. Price, Price attempts to make the reader aware of sports teams that use derogatory terms as their team name and their mascot. He does this by highlighting football, and trying to determine whether Native-Americans are offended by team names in sports, or more specifically, the Redskins. Price’s essay is ineffective because although he raises good points, he doesn’t help the reader to form an opinion by adding historical context to the derogatory names used. He also uses inaccurate poll results to make assumptions about the feelings …show more content…

The closest to this message that Price gets is when he quotes Billy Mills as saying, “Our truth is, redskin is tied to the murder of indigenous people” (Price 66). This quote does help to establish an emotional connection to the use of words such as “redskin,” but it does not fully capture how this word was used to dehumanize and put down Native Americans by the Europeans. It seems as though throughout the essay Price makes note to the audience that these words are offensive and unfair to Native Americans, but he almost completely ignores the deeper reasons for why each one is found to be offensive, which would be helpful in fully understanding both sides of the argument. A way that we can understand the ineffectiveness of Price’s essay is by comparing it to an effective example in chapter two of Language and Prejudice titled, “Language and Ethnicity” by Tamara Valentine. In this chapter, she talks about prejudice towards different ethnicities are created or perceived by the language we use. Sometimes this language is purposeful, and most of the time it is subconscious, but the aim of the chapter is to get us to recognize the things we say around different people. In a passage early on in the article, she

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