What Are The Pros And Cons Of Native American-Based School Mascots

Fighting Indians Warriors, indians, savages, seminoles, redskins, braves, chiefs. All of these native american have been used to describe the mascot of a sports team. Of course, to any average, non-native american person, this may just seem like everyday talk. It may seem borderline meaningless, however, to native americans, it means something a little different. In recent years the debate over these mascots has been on the rise and in the headlines. Many native american activists see the use and representation of native americans as a team mascot as very offensive and their fight is for cultural sensitivity. These activists have especially targeted big teams like NFL teams such as the Redskins- a derogatory term to describe native americans.

There are three sides to this debate though, as most arguments have. There are people who claim that using indians as a mascot is completely offensive and believe that all native-american-based school mascots should be changed to be non-offensive and more politically correct. Of course this would take a lot of effort for the over 2000 schools that use or reference native americans in their school mascot. That is just one of the arguments in this debate, however. In fact, the other side of the argument is in complete support of the mascot. This opposition, which may be referenced as the traditionalists’ argument, is based on the reputation that the teams with indian mascots are attempting to uphold. The argument explains that the mascot shouldn’t be taken offensively because it is being used in memorial of the native americans or is a representation of the native americans as strong and thriving

These claims include proposals such as the memorial cause. This cause and argument claims that each of the schools and teams that have chosen to use these native american stereotypes as their school team mascot is attempting to honor native americans in their culture. This is the most popular claim that is used by the supporters of the mascots. Another is that it is really not meant to harm anyone, according to (cite). There are claims from owners of the teams or administrators of the schools that present the opposition to the activists under the cause that the symbol isn’t meant to be derogatory in anyway and that they are constantly trying to uphold the honor behind it, somewhat similar to the first claim. The most compelling reason behind keeping the mascot would most likely be the monetary value behind it. This is a problem, especially for my high school. Changing our mascot means that anything branded with our mascot logo will be replaced (which is the point). Although, this means a lot of money would need to be invested in a change luke this, money that some schools just do not have. Overall, most of these claims prove to be illegitimate and actually are just an excuse to avoid the