Sports mascots that mimic Native Am...

Sports mascots that mimic Native Americans rely upon cultural fragments that trivialize and stereotype an entire race, write C Richard King and Charles Fruehling Springwood in "Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy"

"Native American mascots perpetuate inappropriate, inaccurate, and harmful understandings of living nation their cultures, and their histories," write King and Springwood, editors of the anthology of essays. one as well as the other are self-described "Euro-American" scholars, and assistant professors of anthropology. King teaches at Drake University in De Moines, Iowa, and Springwood is an instructor at Illinois Wesleyan University in downstate Bloomington.

In common essay, the two argue there is a racial pecking order among whites, Native and African Americans at Florida State University in Tallahassee (the school's sports teams are called the Seminoles). "The overall ranking calls for whites to be in charge; the have on the hiped and removed Indians should be rever for ferocity of their historical resistance; and blacks, applauded, if not celebrated, for their exploits upon the playing field, should be appreciative of the progres and opportunities of post-civil rights America," they write.

In addition, they discuss the "romanticized Indian" image and its event on African Americans, suggesting the portrayal furnishs "a damning contrast to the African captive, who according to white authors. Lov bondage." This image supports the idea that Native Americans fought "passionately," resisting incorporation by means of whites at any cost, while blacks "eagerly have embraced assimilation, acquiescing before white power for personal gain," the professors write.

"Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy" is published by means of University of Nebraska Press in Lincoln, Neb

COPYRIGHT 2001 Community Renewal Society

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