Warrior Motif Analysis

The main topic of the first article deals with the intersectionality between sports, class, racism, education, money and housing in St. Louis. This author talks about the success of the St. Louis Rams in the 1990’s and the low and middle class children of St. Louis are victims of segregation subsidies and racism among the housing market and education.

The main topic of the second article looks at how the Warrior Motif functions in depictions of Native American athletes. The two main depictions that are analyzed includes the depiction of Native American high school basketball players in a 1991 article and Phil Jackson’s usage of the Warrior motif in his book 1995 Sacred Hoops and in a 1999 ESPN television profile.

In the first article, the

author argues that racism and the concept of trickle-down economics play roles in simultaneously ensuring the success of the St. Louis Rams NFL team through selective tax breaks, allowing them to get tax breaks, build stadiums with public money, and gain profit for their multi-million dollar owners with franchise and merchandise opportunities while simultaneously saddling the middle and lower class members of society, from homeowners to children with the cost of these stadiums. Furthermore, the author argues that selective racism also plays a role in funding the activities of the St. Louis Rams over the the underprivileged and underserved African American members of the community in order to enforce and keep the predominantly white urban neighborhoods and the concept of “whiteness” pure from African American influence. In essence, the St. Louis Rams show how the allocation of money can be an act of racism and in this case, the detrimental effects that can occur due to that action.
In the second article, the author argues that the image of the Native American warrior functions to represent societal tensions and contradictions that exist in mainstream society. In the case of the 1991 article about high school basketball on the Crow reservation, the author argues that the portrayal of these basketball players as “fallen warriors,” serve to illustrate the fall of these “noble Indians” by painting them as inept and attributing the emasculation of these Native Americans to Native American culture instead of as problems brought about by colonialism. In the case of Phil Jackson, the author argues that the portrayal of the Native American warrior war traditions for the Chicago Bulls serves to legitimize the reappropriation of American Indian spiritual culture and ignore the Native American source for these war traditions, which allow him to manipulate the culture in order to suit his needs.
The author’s primary sources for the first article include statistics about the amount of money spent and earned from the 1990’s on the topics of education, housing and the cost of the stadium that the St. Louis Rams built along with articles from the time that talk about the proposed “benefit” the stadiums would have on the St. Louis area. Additionally, another primary source comes in the form of demographics from the 1990’s to 2000’s, which include the type of individuals that live in certain areas, along with the cost of living in those areas. The author also draws on rulings from advisory committees and federal court cases involving the segregation of African Americans.
The author’s primary sources for the second article include the actual 1991 article written about the high school basketball players on the reservation and along with Phil Jackson’s written book and subsequent television profile in 1999, along with interviews and various other media appearances between the late 1990’s-2000’s.
The secondary sources for the first article include academic books and articles about the historical context surrounding the building of the stadium and the the history of the St. Louis area. But this author also uses articles that talk about and reflect on the function of whiteness and more specifically, possessive whiteness.
The secondary sources for the second article follow in the same vein as the first with academic books, articles, and other written material in order to trace how the Native American Warrior motif is used and in what context. This author also draws on academic sources that talk about the cultural appropriation of Native American culture and how it functions in larger societal contexts.
The major contribution of the first article to American studies and to the topic of sports is to argue that sports teams and the tax breaks that they gain are examples of institutionalized possessive racism that work to increase the inequality gap between white urban areas and African American population that lives in low-income housing situations. As a result, the extravagant amounts of money spent on stadiums and sports teams and the tax breaks they gain are directly connected to the decreasing amount of money spent on low-income housing for African Americans and education for those individuals that live in poverty.
The major contribution of the second article to American studies and to the topic of sports is that the usage of the Native American warrior in sports is detrimental to Native Americans in their culture, despite whether the usage of Native American culture is positive or negative. Negative depictions of the Native American warrior serve to discount and devalue the progress made by Native Americans to adapt, while positive depictions of the Native American warrior work to to lend a sense of legitimacy to the individuals by enforcing racial hierarchies and as an act of appropriation and reclamation by white America, by which the white reclamation of Native American culture is seen as more “original” and “authentic” than the original Native American culture.
I found both articles really interesting, but I preferred The Silence of the Rams article.

As I was reading it, it reminded me a lot about the conversations I have and still have with my father about the value of UH athletics and the cost that’s unnecessarily given to the students at the University due to tuition increases and the over-reliance on University adjuncts to teach classes. It’s a point that we talk about often, especially after the Stevie Wonder Debacle at UH. Most recently, when UH approved the idea of giving student athletes pensions despite the UH athletic department running in the red. My father and I couldn’t believe it. With the athletic department running in the red, the question becomes, where’s the money going to come from? The answer to this is the student body, particularly with tuition increases and fee increases. I also liked this article because it reminded me of a similar argument made by HBO’s John Oliver of Last Week Tonight, wherein he argues that stadiums built for sports teams are a waste of taxpayer money. Due to my bias and familiarity with the topic, I preferred The Silence of the Rams article because of the mix of statistical information, historical context and simpler argument. That’s not to say that the Warriors and Thieves article wasn’t bad either. The fact that the author could take two different depictions and interpretations of Native American Warrior and make the case for how both positive and negative depictions of the Native American Warrior work to enforce the concept of whiteness in American Society, allowing white Americans to “legitimize” their usage of the Native American warrior motif, while simultaneously reframing and perpetuating the existence of the Native American Warrior as a static image stuck in the past. It’s a pretty neat way to add a ton of complexity to an argument that’s been used and argued many

times.