FedEx criticized for sponsoring Redskins

Virtual Community Calls on ‘Redskins’ Sponsors to ‘Stop Harming Children’Native American organizations and communities from across the country are calling on the Washington NFL team’s corporate sponsors to do what is right for America’s children, and cancel their sponsorship of the Washington football team, starting with Federal Express (FedEx).

This week, the Native Voice Network (NVN), a virtual community of Native American families and organizations, will launch a national public awareness campaign aimed at NFL sponsoring corporations, urging them to end their affiliation with a mascot and nickname that harms children.

“We hope Federal Express and other NFL sponsors are listening,” said Laura Harris, Executive Director of Americans for Indian Opportunity, the organizational host of the NVN.

The campaign will begin with a focus on the Washington team’s primary sponsor–Fed-Ex–and the network is calling on all the NFL corporate sponsors to do what is right for American youth.

Alas, a related tactic hasn't panned out...yet.

Activist shareholders denied vote on FedEx's association with Washington Redskins

By Mark HolanThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has upheld the request by FedEx to block a move by activist shareholders to vote on the company's stadium naming rights association with the Washington Redskins.

The proposal, similar to past unsuccessful efforts, asked the Memphis, Tennessee-based shipping company to allow a discussion and vote on the "reputational damage from its association with the Washington, D.C., NFL franchise team.”

The Oneida Trust of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin was joined by Bethesda-based Calvert Investments, Boston Common Asset Management, Walden Asset Management and Trillium Asset Management in the request.

"We regret that FedEx is censoring our effort to promote an open and productive discussion amongst FedEx shareholders on this critically important issue," Brandon Stevens of the Oneida Tribe said in an emailed statement Tuesday. "It's not too late for FedEx and CEO Fred Smith to do the right thing. They should demonstrate their commitment to diversity and respect for Native American culture and tradition by taking a stand against this racist team name and at the very least allow the proposal to move forward."

"Redskins" protest = white guilt?

The R*dskins Myth of a Manufactured White Liberal Controversy

By Johnnie JaeContrary to what Dan Snyder and R-word supporters would like you to believe, the #Changethename movement against the Washington football team and native mascotry is not a new battle. It has been waging for decades. The belief that this is a controversy stirred up by White Liberals is, also, the furthest thing from the truth.

For over 50 years, Indigenous activists, organizations and their allies have been fighting to end Native Mascotry. While much of the battle and progress has gone unnoticed by the mainstream, two-thirds of all native mascots, team names, and logos have been retired. There are fewer than a thousand left to go.And:Every single day, we have native individuals, organizations, and whole communities working and making progress on the issues that our people are dealing with. Save Wiyabi, All Good Thinking, Lakota People’s Law Project, We R Native, Native American Suicide Prevention Organization, NCAI, Native Youth Sexual Health Network, Owe Aku International, EONM, and I could go on and on listing the wonderful organizations and individuals that we have working on all the issues.

Unlike the mass of R*dskins supporters who are clamoring to claim “Indian blood in their background” to say that as “Indians” they’re not offended, we don’t get to pick and choose what days and on what issues we’re going to choose to be indigenous. We ARE indigenous, which is why we, also, don’t get to pick and choose what issue is or isn’t important. Every issue is important because they directly affect our people as well as the way that we are viewed and treated by mainstream society. This is why it is a ridiculous notion to believe that our other issues are being ignored just so we can focus on the blatant racism of the R*dskins moniker.And:The truth is that there is an awakening that is occurring among our indigenous people. At no other time have we had so many indigenous individuals and organizations tackling our issues in the mainstream media with such tenacity that our voices are getting harder to ignore. We are seizing upon every opportunity we have to make our voices heard and to remind people we are “indomitable” and “unyielding”. Social media has given us the platform to discuss our issues and form alliances on such a scale that the mainstream society can no longer pretend that we are a conquered or extinct people who can continue to be marginalized, fetishized, and exploited for their entertainment and profit.

This is why the R*dskins organization is desperately trying to perpetrate the belief that this issue is being “manufactured” and is the political agenda of White Liberals. As long as the general public believes that this is a “Liberal” temper tantrum, the longer that Dan Snyder and supporters can continue to marginalize native involvement and continue the R*dskins’ 81 year tradition of normalizing and promoting racism towards indigenous people. The problem with their “let’s pretend 91% of all natives are honored by our use of a slur” approach is that they continue to illustrate how out of touch they are with the native community and reality.

Tribes, individuals oppose "Redskins"

It's kind of pathetic that we have to list all the Natives who oppose the "Redskins" name every time the issue comes up. Are mascot lovers too stupid to use Google?

No, obviously, they choose to remain ignorant despite the wealth of information on Native opposition to mascots. They perpetuate the "white guilt" myth to protect their fragile egos from having to rethink their positions.

Well, here's the latest set of Natives who oppose the "Redskins" name. Read 'em and weep, ignorant mascot lovers.

Who has spoken out against the Redsk*ns?As I’m sure you know by now, on Wednesday, June 18th, the US Trademark and Patent office officially cancelled the Redsk*ns trademark, calling the name “disparaging to Native Americans.” It was a huge win, 22 years in the making. In the aftermath, there have been hundreds of articles, tons of news commentary, and people saying a whole lot of racist BS in defense of the name. But as it all has swirled, I kept wanting a collective list of ALL the folks who have spoken out against the team name. So I decided to make one.The list begins with:Tribal Councils/Tribal Leaders/Tribal Members
(thanks to changethename.org for a lot of these)

Navajo Nation
Cherokee Nation
Choctaw Nation
Chickasaw Nation
Seminole Nation of Oklahoma
Muscogee (Creek) Nation
Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation
Oneida Nation of New York
United Tribes of Michigan
Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin
Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians
Hoh Indian Tribe
Penobscot Nation
Samish Indian Nation
Shoshone-Bannock Tribes
Inter Tribal Council of Arizona
Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians Gun Lake Tribe
Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians
Poarch Band of Creek Indians
Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians
The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation
The Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes
The Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation
67% of Native Americans in a new survey
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples James AnayaThen there's this list of thousands of individual Natives who oppose "Redskins":

Scholar Launches Google Doc 'Collective Voice' Campaign to Opposes 'Redskins' Name

By Simon Moya-SmithA Native American scholar has taken it upon herself to combat the ubiquitous, albeit false, argument that the majority of Native Americans do not consider the Washington team name offensive.

Dr. Adrienne Keene, a Cherokee and a recent graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has launched a Google Doc that allows Native Americans who oppose of the pejorative to sign their name and prove the argument erroneous.And perhaps the most prominent Native athlete in major league sports of the last half-century:

Legendary Quarterback Sonny Sixkiller: Redskins Name 'Is Racist to Me'Sixkiller recently spoke with CNN about the controversy surrounding the name of the Washington (DC) Redskins. The Redskins organization has tried to frame this issue as one that Natives don't care about--this clip suggests otherwise, and we hope it will be shared widely to counteract the misinformation.

SF Giants to ban headdresses?

Sell Out, Die, or Survive: What We've Learned From the SF Giants Fiasco

By April NegretteLast week at a San Francisco Giants game, I and a male friend, Kimball Bighorse, were thrown out of AT&T Park. We were not thrown out for being drunk and obnoxious towards other fans; nor for starting a fight or laying hands on anybody. We weren’t even thrown out for being that one person who doesn’t know you don’t touch a ball from the stands while it’s still in play. We were thrown out for telling a non-Native fan to take his costume headdress off, on “Native American Heritage Night” of all nights.

Although I wish this had been an isolated event of racism towards Native people, it’s only one of many examples of the issues we are trying to combat currently. Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington R*dskins, has stated that there are “real issues” and “real-life needs” of Native people that we should be focusing on, not this trivial name. He’s simultaneously right and wrong.

Of course there are other, more physical, needs of Native people. But how are we supposed to combat youth suicide rates, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse when our children grow up seeing themselves are as inferior and their cultures depicted as comical? How are we supposed to be taken seriously when trying to negotiate land, water and treaty rights when society views us as subhuman? High school students make posters for homecoming that say things like "Go Bulldogs, Beat the Indians." Without those land, water and treaty rights, how are we suppose to combat poverty and homelessness when we have no means to do so? You either sell out to American society and culture, you die, or you survive to fight another day.

Fighting another day to me looks like standing up in the face of ignorance and the misunderstandings because of our cultural barrier. It’s like what they say at the airport—If you see something, say something. I’m not saying to start a brawl or humiliate some stranger who doesn’t understand the implications of their actions; educate them instead. If you come at people from a loving place you are more likely to be heard. One man I approached actually took his headdress off—without me asking—and gave me a hug and thanked me for explaining it to him.San Francisco Giants Made Colossal Error in Warbonnet Fiasco

By Andre CramblitThis year they seem to be doing well on the field. It is off the field that they have problems. Ironically on Native American Heritage Night two American Indians (April Negrette and Kimball Bighorse) were accosted by SF Giants security over a headdress that was being worn by a non-Native fan. They were wronged and physically harmed during this unnecessary and preventable event. Both parties should have been treated in the same manner by Security: Bighorse and Negrette should not have been the only participants to be forcefully handcuffed, detained, and asked to leave the game. I feel that Mr. Bighorse and Ms. Negrette, were punished for speaking out about the harms of Native mascotry while the true wrong-doers were allowed their dignity, their bodies and their well-being to be uninjured.

Native Americans should be able to not only attend events free of harmful cultural misappropriation, in addition to being able to speak out about the desecration of Native cultures, people, and sacred items. American Indians have the same right and protection of the 1st amendment, as do other US citizens. Additionally, we have the Indian Civil Rights Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. These acts provide additionally support to Natives in exercising their rights. Speaking up should not have to be an act of courage.

Security for the Giants organization at ATT Park treated the parties involved in this dispute differently. Ignoring the concerns of the Native peoples involved in this incident highlights the lack of awareness around freedom of speech concerning Native Americans. It is my hope that the Giants organization will educate their personnel on how this has been an example of HATE SPEECH, as much as wearing blackface, and should be treated as such.Below:  The headdress in question as photographed by Negrette.



Change in policy?

This incident could lead to a first in major league sports:

San Francisco Giants considering ban on culturally insensitive attire

By Erik BradyThe San Francisco Giants are considering a policy that could prohibit fans from wearing items such as fake headdresses in what American Indian activist Suzan Shown Harjo believes would be a first for a major-league sports franchise.

The proposed policy, which is still in the working stages, could potentially say that fans who wear culturally insensitive attire to games or use culturally insensitive language could be asked to stop by Giants security or potentially be asked to leave the stadium.

Staci Slaughter, Giants senior vice president, communications, and senior advisor to the CEO, said the Giants have policies about obscene language and offensive signs.

“We are considering expanding the policy to be more explicit about culturally insensitive signs and articles of clothing,” she told USA TODAY Sports.A critic tries to question the proposed policy:

Without Feathers: The Flap Over Native American Regalia at the Ballpark Reveals a Deeper Hypocrisy

By Joe Eskenazi[I]n a hypothetical situation resembling the one on Native American Heritage Night, a ballpark ethicist is in for a challenge. If a person who appears to be a Native American and a person who appears to be some other race are wearing identical Native American outfits, would it be considered "arbitrary" to single out solely the second individual as "culturally insensitive"?

Perhaps so, says Moskovitz. "That might be deemed arbitrary. They're both expressing something. There's a vagueness problem."

That vagueness would allow the Giants to potentially take action against fans wearing just about anything. But, in all likelihood, the people wearing the most offensive clothing of all will get a free pass.

Giants' spokeswoman Shana Daum admits that, "given what transpired on Native American Heritage Night," ballpark policy was due for a change. So, what would happen if a fan gallivanted into the stadium wearing a shirt or a cap depicting a caricature of a leering, Indian Sambo with fire engine-red skin?

Well, Daum says, that could be a problem. "If it was offensive to someone in the park, we'd have to take a look," she says.

Well, it is offensive. To a lot of people in the park. And it's also the Major League-licensed logo of the Cleveland Indians.Comment:  Eskenazi seems to think this change in policy would be difficult to enforce. But is it really a change? I bet the stadium security would object to shirts showing a lynched black man, an aborted fetus, Muhammad as a terrorist, a long list of racial and sexual epithets, etc. I'd be amazed if they were free-speech purists who let people wear literally anything.

What Eskenazi seems to object to is adding racist and stereotypical Native images to the (probable) class of banned words and images. Because he isn't used to thinking of his beloved Native icons as racist and stereotypical. Well, too bad for him. His ignorance of what constitutes a racist or stereotypical problem is his problem, not ours.

Case studies

Let's go through the hypothetical examples he offers.

Eskenazi's first case is easily answered. The issue is stereotyping Natives by wearing Plains headdresses. The vast majority of Natives aren't from a Plains culture. And if they were, they wouldn't have earned the right to wear a headdress anywhere, much less to a casual sporting event.

So it doesn't matter if the wearer is Native or not. In something like 99.99% of the cases, the person shouldn't be wearing a headdress, period.

A rule that correctly targets the 9,999 people out of 10,000 who shouldn't wear a headdress isn't "arbitrary." On the contrary, it's so well-defined and precise that it may be the least arbitrary rule in the stadium.

Again, don't wear a headdress unless you're a Plains Indian who's earned the right to wear one. That includes any young non-Plains Indians who think it's hip to wear one.

Eskenazi's second case is the interesting one. Should the Giants ban apparel with Chief Wahoo logos? I'd say yes, because they're racist and stereotypical.

But I doubt the Giants would agree. They suffer from the same myopia as the Cleveland Indians and everyone else in Major League Baseball. That will change as the protests against Chief Wahoo continue.

Headdresses are for children

Why the nostalgic headdress won’t go away

Aboriginal music acts like Ottawa’s A Tribe Called Red strike back at festival-goers sporting headdresses

By Emma TeitelIn June, the U.S. Patent Office ruled to strip the Redskins, an 82-year-old NFL team, of their federal trademarks, because the team’s nickname is “disparaging of Native Americans” (a decision the franchise will appeal), and American Indian advocacy group, People Not Mascots, announced plans this month to sue the Cleveland Indians in federal court for $9 billion over its derogatory “Chief Wahoo” logo. Dozens of news publications, including the Detroit News, have vowed to stop printing the Washington team’s full name, except when writing about the trademark controversy.

This is a commendable stance, it goes without saying, but it’s also almost guaranteed to be forgotten in the fog of indifference that surrounds the issue of Native North American sensibilities. This is because Indian tokenism isn’t really casual; it’s nostalgic: It operates not in the context of adult history, but in the benign, colourful, Neverland of childhood. There’s a reason why kids used to (and still do) play cowboys and Indians on their front lawns, why the classic movie fare for children preceding the 1970s was the western, with its cowboys and Indians, soldiers and Indians, black hats and white hats, morality more at home in colouring books and comic books than in adult art.

Whether the Native people in this context were demonized (more often, as the savage) or lionized (less often, as the noble savage), they were almost always dehumanized—but dehumanized in a way that seemed nothing if not innocent, benign, entertaining and rarely sinister. The Apache warriors shot out of their saddles in the old westerns suffered deaths as bloodless and negligible as the eight-year-old Apache warriors in someone’s backyard. Who were they, the players up on the screen or in the park? Indians, Redskins, Braves. The sports names and mascots hark from the same whitewashed era, and seem to the people who lived through it (or weaned on it) as breezy and inoffensive as kids’ games themselves. Ditto for the white folks in the colourful headdresses at Bonnaroo, who may wonder what all the fuss is about. But being patronized and diminished by someone’s else’s nostalgia is as pernicious as being told to get to the back of the bus. Until people can make that connection, mascots and headdresses are here to stay.Comment:  For more on headdresses, see Why Pharrell's Headdress Was Wrong and Fallin Defends Headdress, "Sheep" Shawl.

"Redskins" on wrong side of history

Three interesting takes on the "Redskins" team name:

Scholar Launches Google Doc 'Collective Voice' Campaign to Opposes 'Redskins' Name

By Simon Moya-SmithA Native American scholar has taken it upon herself to combat the ubiquitous, albeit false, argument that the majority of Native Americans do not consider the Washington team name offensive.

Dr. Adrienne Keene, a Cherokee and a recent graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has launched a Google Doc that allows Native Americans who oppose of the pejorative to sign their name and prove the argument erroneous.

Currently, the Google Doc is meant solely for Native Americans, as Keene writes in a note on her blog, Native Appropriations.

“Right now, this list is for Native peoples only. I may make an ally list in the future, but our voices as Indigenous Peoples are often silenced on this issue, so we need to be able to make our voices heard and have our own space to come together,” Keene told ICTMN. “This is not to be discriminatory or dismiss the important efforts of non-Natives toward the cause, I just need to be able to say that I have a list of X number of Native peoples. Thank you for your understanding!”

Keene said in an email that she does not refer to the Google Doc as a petition, but a “collective voice.”

“I think it’s different than [a petition],” she said. “It’s a collective voice, thousands of indigenous peoples saying, ‘We’re here, and we care about the ways we are represented’.”Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, former chairman of the Blackfeet Nation, “loved every part of the Redskins.” But his grandson doesn't:

One Native American family with Redskins ties disagrees on whether name is offensive

By Theresa VargasAfter the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board issued its June 18 ruling, Bill Wetzel, 39, wrote on his Twitter account: “& now cue Dan Snyder & Bruce Allen bringing up my grandfather creating the logo to defend the racial slur of a name.”

He had seen team executives use similar tactics before. As criticism against the franchise has mounted in the past year, team officials have showcased Native Americans standing by their side. At one game in November, the team honored four Navajo code talkers and released a video that featured one of the war heroes saying, “Hail to the Redskins!” The team also sent out a series of e-mails titled “Community Voices” that contained quotes from fans with indigenous backgrounds.

More recently, a week and a half before a religious group was scheduled to vote on a boycott of the team—one that was later unanimously approved—the team’s chief financial officer had Donald Wetzel Sr., his son Donald Wetzel Jr. and his brother Mike Wetzel talk to a top minister of the United Church of Christ.

“Right now, anybody still fighting for it, they’re on the wrong side of history,” Bill Wetzel said of the team’s name. Two of the most vocal opponents of the name are the Oneida Indian Nation and the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest and largest Native American organization that represents tribes across the country.

“The best you can say is many indigenous people and tribes are either indifferent or apathetic to it, but that’s not the same as being for it,” Wetzel said. “And even those people who are for it wouldn’t allow anybody to come up to them or their children and address them by that name. They’d be liars if they said so.”

Wetzel, a writer and the curator for an indigenous reading series in Tucson, said he has remained mostly quiet on the issue, knowing it’s a sensitive matter for his family. But even if it causes rifts with his relatives, he said he is speaking up now because “you don’t want to go down in history with your name synonymous with a racial slur.”Ironically, Dan Snyder's father wrote a book titled Human Rights in which he discussed Indians:

The Problem With Native American Slurs, According To Dan Snyder's Dad

By Dave McKennaGerald Snyder's certainly no bleeding heart, but his book makes clear that no one was dealt a worse hand than the folks at the root of the Redskins name squabble. American Indians' "cry for human rights has gone the longest unheeded," Snyder writes. After enduring the federal government's genocidal efforts and serial treaty-breaking, the author points out, the native peoples now put up with the hurtful slurs of their fellow Americans. An unnamed Indian tells Snyder that "some people still refer to us as 'bucks' and 'squaws.'"

Snyder connects these casual epithets to a more pernicious variety of prejudice. "The Indians are struggling for full human rights," he writes. "Their main problem: unemployment, with discrimination against them because they are so 'different.'" And though the name-calling is hardly the worst obstacle to prosperity confronting the native peoples, the Indian tells Snyder, it is "still a part of our unemployment problem."

Yet, Snyder the Elder does more than merely catalog man's inhumanity to man. He also points out ways that wrongs might be righted, and he lauds the righteous. In his author's note at the beginning of the book, Snyder specifically thanks the National Council of the Churches of Christ (also known as the National Council of Churches, or NCC). He later commends NCC for getting involved in rights battles in "the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, Argentina, South Africa and Iran."

To that list we can now add "Ashburn, Va.," home of Dan Snyder's football team. Just last month, the board of an NCC affiliate called the United Church of Christ (UCC) voted unanimously to boycott all things Redskins unless and until Snyder drops the name.

"Changing the name of the Washington NFL team will not solve the problems of our country's many trails of broken promises and discriminatory isolation of our Native American communities," said Rev. John Deckenback, CEO of UCC's Central Atlantic Conference, while urging parishioners to stay away from Redskins games and stop wearing licensed clothing. "However, a change in the nation's capital can send a strong message."

"Macaca" blogger quits Redskins

Ben Tribbett the "macaca" blogger had been on the job two weeks, but the news became widespread only yesterday. Imagine our surprise when he quit--roughly a day after people started talking about his hypocrisy:

Political Blogger Ben Tribbett to Resign Two Weeks After Taking Job with Redskins

By Chris LingebachLess than two weeks after the Washington Redskins hired leftward-leaning political blogger Ben Tribbett, to help guide the team’s efforts in preserving its controversial name, Tribbett has announced his intent to inform the team of his resignation.

Tribbett, 34, made clear those intentions Monday evening on Twitter.

The exact cause of Tribbett’s sudden and strange change of heart remains unclear at the moment.

Perhaps it was the discovery of perceived derogatory comments he’d reportedly made, with regard to a Native American man, on Twitter from a Las Vegas casino in 2010, according to Indian Country Today.

In the tweets, Tribbett claimed “an older native American guy just accused me of cheating and pulled some stuff out of his pocket to put some kind of spell on me,” later adding, “I’d call it a scalping but that seems uncalled for.”

Or, perhaps Tribbett’s resignation is the result of the realization he was largely responsible for the takedown of former Virginia Governor and Senator George Allen (brother to current Redskins general manager, Bruce Allen) along his 2006 senatorial reelection bid against Jim Webb.Lingebach's conclusion:Whatever Tribbett’s reason for resignation—maybe it was his personal usage of disparaging remarks, his highlighting of someone else’s, or some combination of the two—his hiring, paired with his subsequent and sudden withdrawal from employment neither bodes well for the team or its fight to control the message, in yet the latest blow delivered to the organization’s defense of its increasingly controversial name.Redskins Blogger Ben Tribbett Resigns via TwitterShortly after being hired, Tribbett appeared on a local DC sports radio show, where he said the debate over the team's name was "mostly sort of a PC campaign." He said that he was job was to get the message out that "the fans overwhelmingly support the Redskins," adding that "what the Redskins are doing—it’s not just the team’s position—they’re really supporting what the fans want them to do, which is to keep the name."

It's a curious mission—after all, anyone familiar with the debate is well aware that the majority of fans support the name. The debate isn't over fan support, it's over the nature of the word as a racist slur.

The Oneida Indian Nation and the National Congress of American Indians released a joint statement on Tribbett's departure. "In trying to continue profiting off of a racial slur, Washington team officials have attempted to assemble a political attack machine, but that has only underscored their insensitivity," says the statement. "The only tenable solution for the team is to recognize that the R-word racial epithet is deeply offensive to Native Americans, to quit pretending that this word somehow honors them, and to stop using this slur."Comment:  In their corporate boardroom, I wonder if anyone seriously argues that they're winning the PR war. From out here, it looks like every PR stunt is a dismal failure. We're talking about 1-2 failures a month, which must be some kind of record.

This incident is about on a par with quoting the "Inuit chief" who was a non-Inuit nobody. It's like a joke campaign, or a primer on what not to do.

"Macaca" blogger defends "Redskins"

The Weirdest Conceivable Twist In The Fight Over Washington’s NFL Team Name

Eight years ago, one of Virginia’s most prominent liberal bloggers convinced America “macaca” was racist. Now he’s in charge of convincing America “Redskins” isn’t.

By Evan McMorris-SantoroLast week, the Washington Redskins hired an unusual defender for the team’s beleaguered name: the man who famously sunk George Allen’s political career with a video of the Republican senator using the word “macaca.”

Ben Tribbett, a blogger who first found and then promoted the video of Allen calling a Virginia man “macaca,” joined the front office of the Washington Redskins and owner Dan Snyder’s team of consultants and paid staff who are defending the NFL franchise’s name.

The effort also brings Tribbett on the same team as Allen, whose brother, Bruce, is the Redskins’ general manager. Tribbett won’t talk about Allen or what exactly he plans to do to defend the Redskins’ name, but he argues his new job is consistent with his long-held belief that the name “Redskins” is neither racist nor divisive.And:But many progressives in Virginia who followed Tribbett for years are “appalled,” one prominent liberal voice in the commonwealth told BuzzFeed.

“You’ve got overlapping priorities” in Virginia, said Catherine Read, Northern Virginia-based progressive political fixture and an Equality Virginia board member who thinks the nickname is racist. “It’s a religion for some people here.”

“I don’t think Ben is coming at this from political correctness,” she added. “He’s coming at it as a fan.”

“Maybe he’s playing 3D chess, like in Star Trek,” one prominent liberal said, wondering aloud how the man who surfaced “macaca” can square his new gig with his past. “Or maybe he’s full of shit.”The previous article doesn't note the richest bit of irony in the story. The following articles do:

Washington’s blogger-turned-lobbyist faces scrutiny

By Mike FlorioOneida Indian Nation, one of the most outspoken Native American groups against the team name, recently pointed out the contradiction.

“Ben Tribbett was right to criticize George Allen for using a racial epithet against people of color, so it is surprising that Mr. Tribbett is now a paid operative working with George Allen and his brother Bruce to actively promote a racial epithet against people of color,” the group said in a recent statement. “Mr. Tribbett needs to explain why he thinks it is unacceptable to slur Indian Americans but that it is somehow acceptable to similarly slur Native Americans. Maybe he’s had a change of heart and now thinks denigrating people on the basis of their skin color is OK, or perhaps he was fine selling his principles to the highest bidder. In this case, Dan Snyder has repeatedly proven that he is the highest bidder of them all when it comes to his desire to continue profiting off of the slander of Native Americans.”

More recently, a diligent effort to track down the content of Tribbett’s now-defunct blog revealed that he supported his contention that “macaca” is a slur by linking to a list of slurs that included “macaca.” And, yes, “redskins.”

While not quite the smoking gun that some will deem it to be, the presence of the word Tribbett is now defending on a list of slurs that included the name he once attacked shows that he probably wasn’t the best choice to help the effort to defend the name. Making his hiring the latest blunder by a franchise that has authored over the last year and a half an excellent case study on how not to handle P.R. problems.Nasty Tweets the Redskins and Their Blogger Don't Want You to ReadTribbett blogged repeatedly about what turned out to be a history of questionable comments and behavior by George Allen. But he didn't limit himself to Allen and "macaca"--when he thought he'd found a Democrat using a slur, he posted about it. When Tribbett felt the Allen campaign might be using an anti-Semitic symbol (a lightning bolt), Tribbett, who is Jewish, blogged about it. At one point he says, in boldface text: "Racial slurs are not funny things to joke about." Tribbett in 2006 just does not seem like the sort of person who would take a job defending the Redskins name.

But political blogging is an insincere medium--more insincere even than sports blogging. People will say anything if they think it will get their candidate elected. Did Tribbett care about racism in 2006? Was he really offended by George Allen's use of "macaca"? We again tip our cap to Frances Danger for noticing the Twitter widget in the archived Not Larry Sabato blog. These are Tweets (still live here, here and here) written by Tribbett in 2010, from a gambling table in a Las Vegas casino:

"An older native american guy just accused me of cheating and pulled some stuff out of his pocket to put some kind of spell on me. Epic. ... 100 into 500. #cursefail ... Just took Chief for his last 300. I'd call it a scalping but that seems uncalled for."

This is the guy the Redskins have hired to sell the idea that the team's name "honors" Native Americans. We score this one another fumble by Redskins management.

Debating an "Arab" parade float

Facebook friend Brad posted a 2013 photo of an "Arab" float in a St. Patrick's Day parade. He added a caption:Like the original Irish emigrants to America--old white men pretending to be Arabs.



My immediate response: That's racist.

This led to an interesting debate with Brad and Cx. Brad spoke up early:Oh, that's not even the worst of it. Unfortunately I totally missed getting a photo of the float with two white women dressed as "black" basketball players!And then Cx and I were off to the races, beginning with her comment:And what, people can't satirize anymore without someone getting butt-hurt somewhere? Is theater dead then? Are red-nosed big-shoed clowns a stereotype too? Don't tell the thespians. It's a parade for cripes sake. Oh wait, no offense to the cripes. Have their people call my people. Keep pushing the word racism in the wrong context, it looses its meaning in the right contexts.One, I doubt anyone intended this to be a satire. Two, no, you can't satirize an entire ethnic group. Unless you're a member of that group, maybe, or the group as a whole has abused its power.

So you're saying there are contexts where racism is acceptable? Hell, no.There are contexts--theatrics as storytelling being one--in which apparel items and set design items are inherent in the telling of the story. People of other races can't portray each other without the label of racism? "Group that has abused its power" being a variable, and one of opinion.

Justifying when (and how) portrayal, parody or even sincere attempts to tell a story & use of items in the telling is not the answer to ending racism, if that's your goal. The old adage: *The honor of one is the honor of all.*Defending and justifying racism by making up a label such as "parody" or "satire" isn't the answer either. If the so-called parody isn't obvious, it doesn't exist except in the racists' minds.

Doing nothing except applauding racism like this example certainly won't do anything to end the scourge. My critiques are far more likely to do the trick.

"Art" excuses racism?

Theatrics or storytelling for what purpose? The purpose is the context. If it's to educate or enlighten, maybe. If it's merely to entertain by parading racism, literally, so observers will laugh at the funny nonwhite people...again, no.

So you're in favor of people in minstrel shows performing in blackface? Because that's exactly the same thing.

"People of other races can't portray each other without the label of racism?" Depends on the context and purpose. If it's to portray people falsely, with stereotypes, no. That's almost always unacceptable.

Perhaps you need to (re)read the documented harm of stereotyping as proved in psychology studies. Here you go:

The Harm of Native Stereotyping: Facts and Evidence

As one recent example of the harm, the "savage Indian" stereotype promoted by hipsters in headdresses tells Americans that tribal courts are unfair and violence against Native women is to be expected. Hence the conservatives' unwillingness to pass VAWA.You implying what I'm "saying" rather than focusing on what I'm questioning for the PURPOSE of questioning isn't necessary, Your responses are sufficient rather than implying what I mean. But your page, your pic, have at it.I addressed what you said and what you implied. If you think I got something wrong, feel free to address that point. Until you do, I'd say my interpretation stands.

Yes or no: This performance is equivalent to a minstrel show in blackface. If no, how is it different?The survey you link above being relevant to American Indian stereotypes specifically, can we keep the focus on THIS photo please? I don't know that it's satire, that's one assumption, but being I wasn't there and have never talked to these people to learn their intent, did you or Brad ask them?You're the one who wrote: "Keep pushing the word racism in the wrong context." This isn't the wrong context, it's the right context. You're mistaken if you think otherwise, and I've explained why.

If you have to ask someone if their racism is "satire," the satire has failed. If the satire isn't evident to observers, it doesn't exist except in the satirists' minds.

As I've explained dozens of times, the outcome is what matters, not the intent. People who malign women or gays or minorities don't get a free pass because they didn't "intend" to insult people. If they committed the offense, they're responsible regardless of what they intended.

P.S. Any research specific to Native stereotypes obviously applies to other minorities. More important, it's the tip of the iceberg. There's much more research about the harm to other minorities that I didn't cite.

Don't need no intentThis is a still photo. Without knowing the context or the persons' intent(s), you call it racism. Did you think to ask a person--better yet, take a survey of many (as opinions within a racial group vary)--from this way of dressing if they believe this is racism? Or are you the arbitrary the decider of racism in America, Rob?Intent is irrelevant. You don't understand racism and stereotyping if you think they exist only when people intend them to exist. Try again.

Again, their opinions on what they were doing are irrelevant. What matters is the outcome.

Is this a fair and accurate portrayal of Arabs or Muslims as a whole? If not, it's stereotypical. If they're singling out Arabs or Muslims for this treatment, it's racist.

Still waiting for an answer to my blackface question.

Every American can and should decide what's racist and speak out when something obviously is. If a person doesn't, she's part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Same as if they see a rape happening in Steubenville or on a military base. Those boys didn't mean to hurt anyone, and neither did those soldiers. Shall we give them a pass because of their intent?"Try again" I often see you do this when your point becomes validly challenged and you attempt to make your opinion right over the other person. "The outcome" to whom? See, that assigning of whose effects are important (and decisive) and whose are not--now there's a clue!You haven't "validly challenged" anything. I've raised a dozen legitimate points and I'm not seeing your answer to any of them. What are you waiting for, an invitation? Answer the blackface question, for starters.I say I have validly challenged. Now who gets to be the decider? Opinion leaders? Isn't this fun? :-)Challenging questions with questions such as "the outcome to whom?" is the weakest sort of debate tactic. It's what pathetic people do when they don't have any arguments of their own. "The evidence supports evolution or climate change? Says whom?"

Yes or no: Is this performance equivalent to a minstrel show in blackface?

Yes or no: Is this a fair and accurate portrayal of Arabs or Muslims as a whole?

Yes or no: We should judge military rapes by whether the rapists intended to cause harm?Questions means I don't have an answer--yet. And therefore I reserve judgement and labeling until I know more. I don't see a debate to be won or lost here, Rob, I see an exchange of opinions. In your opinion, these folks dressed as they are in the context of a parade is racism, is that correct?You stated that this is the "wrong context" in which to attack or judge racism. That's not a question, it's a judgment.

Yes, this performance is racist. I wasn't kidding when I wrote that in my first comment.Yes, in my opinion, which at this time in this context I am voicing, calling or labeling this racism--judging simply on this being people of one race portraying another--without you being an "opinion leader" or whatever representative (debatable) of persons of this type of dress or culture is the wrong context, that's correct, you heard me right.Brad chimes in

Finally Brad returned to the debate:I'll happily be the "opinion leader"!

I would concur that you have to consider "intent", however not at the expense of "result". I think the rape example is a poor one, because while intent can serve as a mitigating factor the end result is always unquestionably harm. With racism that's considerably more of a gray area.

I think it's possible for one race to portray another in the context of education, performance art, or historical commentary without necessarily being racist. So I would say that's a point for Cx's argument on the issue. One example would be if a theater company in Norway were putting on a production of Othello, I wouldn't expect them to hunt down a black actor capable of playing the part. So it would probably be forgivable if they put an actor in blackface even though it wouldn't be absolutely necessary.

In this example, however, I think I'd have to side with Rob because the intent clearly doesn't meet the standard of being educational or informative. Nor are these people "satirizing" Arab culture. I think the comparison in this case to the "borrowing" of Native American culture is a good one. These people are pretty clearly lampooning Arab dress for their own purpose. I wouldn't put it on the same level as someone stereotyping, such as portraying an Arab as a crazy terrorist, but I would probably say it's on par with white people dressing in inaccurate Native attire and holding a pow wow. ;-)

Here's some factual background to consider:

Abdallah Shrine: A Brief History

ShrinersCx responded:Oh lookie, it's Brad. Yea well who the heck asked your opinion buddy? Oh it's your pic on Rob's wall haha ok seriously. So we have context here, Brad, this a group of Shriners, an organization whose purpose or effect is fundraising for its support of children's hospitals, is that correct?Stereotypes can be positive (Asians are brains), neutral (blacks like watermelon), or negative. This example is closer to neutral than negative, but it's still stereotypical.

"Arabs are terrorists" or "Indians are savages" is negative. "Arabs ride camels" or "Indians wear feathers" is neutral. But again, all these claims are stereotypical.

And if you persist in making these claims after you've been informed of the facts, I'd say they're racist too.

As for Brad's claim, I thought I said portraying a different ethnic group may be acceptable in certain circumstances. This isn't one of them. As you put it, Brad, it serves no purpose as "education, performance art, or historical commentary."

Therefore, agreeing with Cx means agreeing with me on this limited subset of the debate. On the main point, though, you're right that I'm right. There's no question that this parade float is stereotypical and arguably racist.

With its talk of priests and mosques, the Abdallah Shrine looks like a whole "homage" to (i.e., mockery of) Islam. It brings to mind such faux "Native" groups as the Order of the Red Men and the Y-Indian Guides. These groups appropriated and abused Native culture; this group seems to have done the same for Islamic culture.

Brad reaches a verdictBrad
Ha! Ha! O.k. I think I see what you're getting at Cx. Yes, the result of this situation is that they raise money to help sick children. Are you suggesting that they couldn't achieve the same result without the pageantry or phony "tradition". I think they probably could.

In a parallel example, the Washington Redskins are civic organization which has won football championships and no doubt helped the Washington D.C. community in numerous economic and philanthropic ways. Does that make their use of Native culture and iconography acceptable because there's a positive outcome?

Cx
Brad, I'm still comprehending what this is exactly. At first I thought this was a music performance in costumes, and perhaps a parody. I've since learned from the link you included that these are a group of shriners. That's where we left off. I don't think that simply because shriners as a group are philanthropic affects is this racism or not. I see it more as a theatrical effort. I still don't know if they are a parody or satire or serious from the still photo alone. Donning the clothing common to another area of the world or culture isn't in itself racism either. I look forward to picking up where we left off, Brad.Racism and entertainment aren't two mutually exclusive categories. Something can be both.

For instance, the minstrel shows I mentioned. The performers thought they were just being "entertaining." But observers could see that their so-called entertainment was racist.Brad
My position on this particular affair Cx is that it's racist. I think the two things clouding the issue are that it's a culture that's considerably less familiar to us and that the origins of their misuse are so long removed from the current practice.

On face, I'd say this no different than the hipster "pow wows" The origin of this civic group was in a "secret" society or club of white folks who used the Arabian imagery and mythos for their club strictly because it was old and "cool" and gave their organization the air of being something ancient and mystical.

As if that weren't bad enough, the current members are appropriating the cultural hallmarks of Arab society and wearing them in a mocking or cartoonish way, again much as the pretend Indians do. In that sense, I'd say Rob's example of the minstrel shows isn't parallel however as these people aren't attempting to actually portray Arabs.The rape example is a good one if there's no physical damage. The psychological harm of rape and racism is an apples-to-apples comparison.

In both cases, the act can cause painful mental trauma. Yes, rape is usually worse, but people have committed suicide over racist taunts and bullying, just as they've done over rape. The only "gray area" here is how severe the trauma is, not whether it exists.

And in both cases, you can't be sure of the perpetrator's intent. A rapist could've seriously thought he was "making love" to his victim and you can't prove him wrong. As with racism, we judge rape by the results because the intent is irrelevant. Harm is harm whether the perpetrator intended it or not.

As for the Shriners, I suspect they thought they were portraying actual Arabs. And I doubt minstrel performers were any less aware then than they are now. They were spoofing or caricaturing blacks for "fun," exactly as these Shriners are doing to Arabs.

Therefore, all my examples are good ones. Other than that, I agree with Brad since he agrees with me. ;-)

For more on the subject, see Bloody Jackson, Family Guy, and Archie Bunker, Hipster Racism, and The Magical Power of Intent.

Big Heap Herman in The Munsters

The Munsters: Big Heap HermanWhen the Munsters go on vacation to Buffalo Valley, Herman gets off at rest stop in Indian Flats, where he gets left behind. When he wanders into a Indian Village, an elder of the tribe thinks that Herman is an ancient spirit leader, back to revitalize his tribe's way of life.

Episode Info

Episode number: 2x18
Production Number: 27028
Airdate: Thursday January 20th, 1966

Comment:  Needless to say, this episode is ridiculous, for several reasons:

The name "Buffalo Valley" and the "Indian Flats" train station are meant to suggest a remote and "wild" West. This is the only place where Indians exist, according to many Americans.

Indeed, when Herman discovers the tribal village, he says it's one of the "lost Indian tribes" he was reading about. Implying that normal Indian tribes don't exist anymore.

The "tribe" has the usual teepees, headdresses, buckskins, warpaint, and drums, but also a totem pole topped by an image of Herman. Because all tribes are defined by teepees and totem poles, I guess.

The actors playing the Indians include Ned Romero ("Wonga"), whose ancestry is Chitimacha Native American. The rest are whites in makeup and wigs.

Romero's sidekick "Manikoo" is played by Len Lesser, a Jewish actor who often portrayed Eastern European types. Manikoo even sounds like a fast-talking hustler from New Jersey. It's a ridiculous characterization for an Indian.

The Indians reveal that they're 1960s hep cats who are just pretending to be traditionalists for the tourists. Apparently this is an attempt to inoculate the creators from charges of racist stereotyping.

In other words, the creators wanted to assure viewers they were "just kidding." Like any good hipsters these days, they presented the racism, then tried to wink it away. Like, "We wanted you to laugh at the Indians, but not to criticize us, because we know the faux Indians were laughable."

Seeing that Herman resembles an ancient god or "spirit leader" the tribe decides to marry him to an Indian maiden. Herman is a big goof, but he acts even more stupidly than usual. He goes along with the Indians without a qualm, despite the fact that he's happily married.

Wonga is uncertain about this gambit. Maybe Herman really will bring the tribe good fortune. If not, he says, the Indians can perform the marriage ceremony three times a day for the tourists.

The whole concept of the tribe as a tourist destination is ridiculous. What tourists? They're in the middle of nowhere, six miles from a lonely train station where no one stops. How could this possibly be a money-making venture?

The episode is a curiosity. On the one hand, it presents a traditional tribe based on dozens of the most blatant stereotypes. On the other, a couple of its Indians talk like regular people: modernists who mock their own traditions.

As I said before, it's like trying to have your cake and eat it too. But it signals a transition in movies and TV: from Indians as primitive people of the past to Indians who are nominally part of the present.

The racebending of Billie Frechette

An old posting about the Native character in the 2009 film Public Enemies:

The Woman is Red: The Racebending of Billie Frechette

By Gabriel CanadaI had high hopes that such terrible inaccuracies wouldn’t be repeated three decades later when Universal Studios took on the retelling of Dillinger’s life for Public Enemies (2009). From the start, historical accuracy was respected with director Michael Mann shooting on location at the banks, hotels, prisons, and hideouts where the real events took place–even going so far as to have his set designer restore many of them, creating tourist havens for local communities. The actors and film makers even descended on the Dillinger family farm.

That is why it was even more disappointing that–though Billie’s romance was central to the plot of this new film and it was closer to the truth in almost every way–”racebending” was still employed, unapologetically. Marion Cotillard still introduces herself as half-Indian in her first scene. She makes it clear that she’s been scorned for it, saying that most guys don’t like that about her. (I am left with the impression that it isn’t “most guys” who wouldn’t like that about Billie, but rather “most guys in Hollywood.”)

Which is baffling. Michael Mann, the director of Public Enemies, was also the director of Last of the Mohicans and Heat. He played a large part in launching the careers of actors of color like Wes Studi and Eric Schweig in the 1990s. Though Mann keeps the context of Billie’s heritage intact in the film, and has a history of working with First Nation actors, we are left with Cotillard–who, like Phillips before her, is far removed from the Wisconsin reservation where Frechette lived most of her life. The only way to let the audience know Cotillard is playing an Indian is for the actors to come straight out and say it, as if denied the use of a buckskin dress, Hollywood simply didn’t know how to introduce an audience to a First Nations woman in a speakeasy.

Billie Frechette is the sole heroine in these Dillinger films, where tough guy gangsters are mowed down in hails of bullets and G-men don’t bother to flash their badges before opening fire. Yet, the first thing the film makers want the audience to know is that she is half Indian. It makes me wonder: If that detail about her is so important, why was this overlooked by the casting directors?

We are meant to feel sympathetic for Billie in Public Enemies and Dillinger. Not much good happens to her. She goes to jail and is tortured by the FBI for little more than falling in love with the wrong guy.

The films take pains to suggest she was with that wrong guy because no one wanted to dance or drink with an Indian. Well, if anyone is responsible for that last plight of Billie onscreen, it is Hollywood itself. Crime may not pay, but Hollywood–for whatever reason–still thinks racebending will.Comment:  For more on Public Enemies, see Cotillard's Discovery of the Menominee and (Mis)casting in Public Enemies.

Wiggle Tooth of the Tooth Tribe

Meet Wiggle Tooth, Germany’s Stereotypical Native of Hygiene

By Red HaircrowThe fight against Native mascots, stereotypes and caricatures have made recent headlines around the world as Native Americans continue attempts to educate others against the usage and defense of demeaning and disrespectful imagery, and stop the practice. Though research studies by groups such as the American Psychology Association have concluded such imagery is detrimental to Natives, especially in our young people, who have some of the highest rates of suicide in the world, in Germany such images are endless.

Just one among other German authors with Indians as their drawing point, from penning crime dramas and thrillers, Sascha Ehlert turned to that more financially lucrative theme, using such Native caricatures to fuel a series of children’s books promoting good oral hygiene. Written in adventure type stories geared towards ages four to 10, after gaining in popularity with children, parents and teachers, the author soon began to promote his work by touring festivals, schools and kindergartens, where he is received with eager applause. Wearing his own fake Indian headband with a feather, in front of an audience of “little Indians” bedecked the same, Ehlert often encourages them to make whooping noises in imitation of the Indian stereotype to build the atmosphere before beginning his storytelling.

With illustrations by José Antonio Martin Vilchez, the main character of the books is a little girl named Wiggle Tooth of the Tooth Tribe. A stereotypical supporting cast includes a gray-haired shaman, a faithful animal sidekick and a variety of comedic others. The main rivals of her band are the Stinkyfoot Tribe, the leader of which is Chief Cheese Foot. Other tribes interested in gaining the lost teeth of the Tooth tribe’s children and making general mischief are the Cavity Apaches, whose favorite past-time is tying people to martyr stakes.Comment:  This is a typical example of Indians as uncivilized savages--i.e., primitive people of the past.

Stereotypical Deadskins video game

Is This Fun? 'Deadskins' Game Promises Scalp-Taking Zombie IndiansA video game designer is seeking funds for "Deadskins," a proposed console game that many Natives will no doubt find troubling.

The story begins with the mysterious massacre of a tribe by a supernatural being or beings. Then, as described at the game's Kickstarter page:

Using the powers and secrets of your elders, you must journey on a vision quest to repair the Spirit World and heal Mother Earth. Quickly become a warrior and fight a psychedelic battle against a man who has forgotten that he has died. He is a man known as the Dead Skin walker. And his power over the dead, was strong enough to punch a hole through to the land of the living, sending many lost spirits in search of revenge.

Ancestral spirits begin to rise from the earth and mount war parties of the Undead. This ravenous group of zombies attack everything they see and they quickly become many like the stars. They are DEADSKINS; a crazed and bloodthirsty tribe of the undead. Mounted on zombie beasts, the demonic warriors begin to cross over to the land of the living and curse all creatures they encounter.

Writer Dani Miller explains why the Deadskins game is a bad idea:

“Deadskins”--Genocide as Entertainment

By Danielle MillerDominant white culture will never seem to get over its unhealthy obsession with depicting Native Americans as dead and extinct. Cultural objects are whitewashed by acts of appropriation, celebrities and even the general public continues to wear imagery of dead Natives. This perpetual pattern to insult to Native American culture has become so intrinsic that I’m beginning to believe it is an unspoken element of capitalist identity and policy.

What does this say about American culture that it is so inundated with imagery which symbolically subjugates populations who have been oppressed and survived through attempted genocide? It speaks to the success colonization has had on indoctrinating our “color blind” “post racial” society into ongoing imperialism in such a matter that celebration of genocide is normalized. It speaks to the continued genocide that many are complicit in; from perpetuation of stereotypes through erasure, the pillaging of cultural identity through cultural appropriation to blatant exploitation of native resources. Ultimately these seemingly shallow “issues” of stereotypes have causation with statistics and realities of colonial violence.

Many mitigate dead Native depictions by saying well “they just look cool.” But the effects of erasure through Dead Native stereotype are explicit every time someone rejects a real living Native American’s identity by saying: “You don’t “look” like an Indian” or, “I thought all the Indians were dead.”Comment:  For more on the message of dead Indians, see "Dreamcatcher and Skull" Clothing Line and Kanye's T-Shirts Feature Indian Skulls.

For more on Indians as zombies and vice versa, see "Zombies Are the New Indians" and What the Zombie Trend Means.

Replacing white heroes with minorities

Comics curmudgeon John Byrne explains why he doesn't like the casting of Michael B. Jordan as the Human Torch.

John Byrne Explains Why 'Racebending' Doesn't Help THE FANTASTIC FOUR Reboot

The posting starts with an earlier quote from Byrne to suggest his racial attitudes:Personal prejudice: Hispanic and Latino women with blonde hair look like hookers to me, no matter how clean or “cute” they are. Somehow those skin tones that look so good with dark, dark hair just don’t work for me with lighter shades.--John Byrne, 2005Byrne's main argument seems to be this:If we took a story written by a Black African, set in Africa, about Africans, and arbitrarily turned one of the characters White, there would be (justifiable) outrage. The valid point would be made that we cannot simply “whitewash” a Black character and end up with the same person, the same dynamic, the same presence in the story.

How is it any different to take a White character and paint him/her Black? Nick Fury, to cite but one example, had to turn into a different character when he was painted Black.

Why not MAKE him a different character? Give him is own identity, instead of one handed down from on high by White folk? Make him Gabe Jones, or Gabe Jones Jr, or Gabe Jones III, if you want to tie into existing continuity. As the “Everything That’s Wrong With…” site so aptly points out, Fury in the Marvel Movies has no depth at all. He is defined entirely by the eyepatch.I don't see how his "solution" of creating new minority characters applies.

It's a fine notion by itself, and it may lead to more minority characters in movies. In 25 or 50 years, when these characters become fan favorites. But how does it help integrate movies now?

It sounds like another way of saying, "Let's keep movies white until those uppity minorities have earned a seat at the table." Which ignores the fact that white creators pander to white fans in a racist feedback loop. That there's no "meritocracy" that gives minority characters a fair shot at becoming stars.

Marvel, champion of equality?

Byrne also gives us a pseudo-history of racial attitudes at Marvel in the 1960s:Lee, Kirby, Ditko and the rest introduced ethnic and racial minorities with a far greater frequency than, say, DC. Wyatt Wingfoot became a regular member of the FF’s supporting cast. Robbie Robertson showed up in Spider-Man. The Black Panther arrived. Heroic non-White figures arose from the ranks of the common man. Remember Al B. Harper, who died to save the world?

When Johnny is race-swapped the inevitable response from some segments of fandom and the media is that this is “necessary” due to comics in the 1960s being hotbeds of White supremacy—while nothing is further from the truth. American comics had long been the home to some of the most liberal, forward thinking people you were likely to meet. They cannot be taken to task for portraying society as that society perceived itself. But they should definitely be lauded for being, often, ahead of the curve when it came to social reform.I'd say his comments about how 1960s comics merely reflected how society perceived itself are wrong. First, he obviously meant white society, not our actual society with its multitudes of minorities. If Marvel's staffers had looked out the windows, they would've seen a lot more diversity than appeared in their comics.

Second, comics have always been on the trailing edge of social change. Movies such as The Defiant Ones (1958) tackled racial issues a good ten years before comics got around to them. I don't give comics much credit for belatedly changing after more progressive media embarrassed them into joining in.

Also note that Byrne's icons of equality, Wyatt Wingfoot and the Black Panther, aren't as progressive as he thinks they are. Both characters were members of super-scientific tribes that kept their advances hidden from the world. The implications of that are troubling.

What these comics told us is that these exceptional examples of Africans and Native Americans were the only ones worth mentioning. Perhaps one in a thousand of these nonwhite people were smart enough to be scientists or brave enough to be heroes. The rest weren't. Roughly 99.9% of blacks and Natives were apparently too stupid or scared to deserve depiction.



Aquaman the Aryan?

Another posting responds to the casting of Jason Momoa as Aquaman as well as Jordan as the Human Torch. It's excellent so read the whole thing, but here's a key excerpt:

Radioactive Blackness And Anglo-Saxon Aliens: Achieving Superhero Diversity Through Race-Changing

By Andrew Wheeler[T]he oceans are vast and interconnected, and Atlanteans are presumably well travelled and not bound to a single mainland culture. Making Atlanteans diverse is more interesting than making them homogeneous and white, and casting a mixed-race actor like Momoa makes the most sense. Casting a blond white actor would create the impression that Atlanteans are implausibly Eurocentric and strangely Aryan.

That’s a direction the filmmakers could explore, of course. Even without exploring it, a justification could be made for Aquaman’s blondness or whiteness. In most tellings, Aquaman is half-human, and half-American, and maybe even half-Floridian, so there’s nothing saying he can’t be white and blond. Some humans, some Americans, and some Floridians are white and blond. (Many are not, but some are.)

Come to think of it, an in-plot justification isn’t really needed. If the character is white and blond, audiences won’t actually question it.

The Way of All Flesh-Color

This is cultural bias in effect. General (generally white) audiences never question why characters are white and blond. If a character could be white, that’s usually justification enough. Whiteness as default becomes logical and comfortable. Only non-whiteness requires an explanation.

Indeed, if a character is not white, some people will cry out that their racial identity is the product of political agenda-driven tampering. If a character is white, the same people will comfortably assume that he or she came out of the box like that.

It should be noted that we’re not even talking about the broad US census category of “white,” which covers people whose families hail from Europe, North Africa or the Middle East—including many people with tan, olive or ruddy skin.

In comics, whiteness is predominantly represented by the pale pink complexions of Northern Europeans—the color once problematically referred to as “Flesh” on Crayola crayons, until Crayola changed it to “Peach” in 1962. Real world white comes in many shades, but in comics all white people seem to trend towards hex color #FFCFAB. (Individual colorists may of course bring more nuance to their work, but how many white superheroes can you name who are consistently portrayed with bronze or olive-toned skin?)

Superhero comics don’t actually favor whiteness; they favor a subset of whiteness that borders on Aryan idealism. We ought to regard that as uncomfortably fetishistic, because it’s an aesthetic that the industry has chosen.

All fiction is manufactured. Authors make their worlds and choose what goes in them. It is always possible to contrive a fictional justification for a character looking whichever way the author wants, up to and including finding a way to make a white person the hero in a story about, say, feudal Japan, or ancient Egypt, or Persia during the Islamic Golden Age. A white hero is not the most likely scenario, but it’s always a possible scenario, so in that way it always becomes justified.

The decision to cast Michael B. Jordan as the Human Torch has been called out by message board posters as evidence of an agenda at work—but white heroes in these non-white settings are rarely called out as similar evidence of an agenda. It’s all artifice, it’s all contrived. Fiction exists in service to an author’s design. All fiction serves an agenda, whether it’s articulated or not.Comment:  Wheeler's argument applies very well to Natives in movies, TV, and comics. Whites star in Native-oriented movies (e.g., Dances with Wolves), are cast as Native characters (e.g., Taylor Lautner, Brandon Routh, Johnny Depp), or replace Native characters with whitewashed versions (e.g., The Last Airbender).

Ironically, Momoa is something of an offender, taking Native roles in The Red Road and other projects despite his tiny amount of Native blood. Which shows how the prevailing narrative gets twisted. White characters are often blond and Aryan--a fact that's especially obvious on TV. But Native characters can be anyone with a tan.

For more on casting issues, see Natives Protest Tiger Lily Casting and Stand-Off Over Cry, Trojans!

Is "off the reservation" offensive?

Should Saying Someone Is ‘Off The Reservation’ Be Off-Limits?

By Kee MaleskyThe Original Meaning of the Term

In its literal and original sense, as you would expect, the term was used in the 19th century to describe the activities of Native Americans:

“The acting commissioner of Indian affairs to-day received a telegram from Agent Roorke of the Klamath (Oregon) agency, dated July 6, in which he says: ‘No Indians are off the reservation without authority. All my Indians are loyal and peaceable, and doing well.” (Baltimore Sun, July 11, 1878)

Many of the news articles that used the term in a literal sense in the past were also expressing undisguised contempt and hatred, or, at best, condescension for Native Americans—“shiftless, untameable…a rampant and intractable enemy to civilization” (New York Times, Oct. 27, 1886).

Native Reaction to the Term

Rob Capriccioso, citizen of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians, and Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for Indian Country Today writes:

“I bristle when I hear the phrase because many of the people who use it nonchalantly have likely never thought about its origin, nor have they probably ever visited a reservation.”

“It’s not about political correctness, either, it’s about helping the majority realize that there is a minority point-of-view that holds weight that the majority is giving too little credence. To me, there are indeed many more offensive words involving American Indians than this phrase—including the name of the Washington football team—but I believe it is the common use of phrases like ‘off the reservation’ that allows people to end up being comfortable going further—to the point of using a slur to name a football team that supposedly honors Indians, but not realizing that it is actually a slur.”Comment:  Several Natives said they didn't like the phrase. But they focused on how it makes them feel, not why it's wrong.

It's wrong because it conveys a 19th-century impression of Natives. That they should stay on the reservation where we put them. That they're dangerous if they leave the reservation with their marauding, murderous ways. That the only way to turn them into peaceful Americans is to tame them like animals in cages.

Even if those using the phrase aren't referring to actual Natives, they're reinforcing an outdated image. Today, 70% of Natives live off the reservation, so leaving a rez isn't an issue. They're already well-integrated into society with no major problems. To imply they've done something wrong or are out of control is stereotypical.

To be sure, "off the reservation" is a minor wrong. It's akin to "too many chiefs" or "low man on the totem pole," which are also minor problems. Still, people should think about their choice of words. They should avoid phrases like this one.

For more on the subject, see Commissioner: Indians Should Get Off the Rez.

Native military names assuage guilt

A writer lays out the problem with using Native names for killer missiles and aircraft:

The U.S. military’s ongoing slur of Native Americans

By Simon WaxmanIn the United States today, the names Apache, Comanche, Chinook, Lakota, Cheyenne and Kiowa apply not only to Indian tribes but also to military helicopters. Add in the Black Hawk, named for a leader of the Sauk tribe. Then there is the Tomahawk, a low-altitude missile, and a drone named for an Indian chief, Gray Eagle. Operation Geronimo was the end of Osama bin Laden.

Why do we name our battles and weapons after people we have vanquished? For the same reason the Washington team is the Redskins and my hometown Red Sox go to Cleveland to play the Indians and to Atlanta to play the Braves: because the myth of the worthy native adversary is more palatable than the reality—the conquered tribes of this land were not rivals but victims, cheated and impossibly outgunned.

The destruction of the Indians was asymmetric war, compounded by deviousness in the name of imperialist manifest destiny. White America shot, imprisoned, lied, swindled, preached, bought, built and voted its way to domination. Identifying our powerful weapons and victorious campaigns with those we subjugated serves to lighten the burden of our guilt. It confuses violation with a fair fight.

It is worse than denial; it is propaganda. The message carried by the word Apache emblazoned on one of history’s great fighting machines is that the Americans overcame an opponent so powerful and true that we are proud to adopt its name. They tested our mettle, and we proved stronger, so don’t mess with us. In whatever measure it is tribute to the dead, it is in greater measure a boost to our national sense of superiority. And this message of superiority is shared not just with U.S. citizens but with those of the 14 nations whose governments buy the Apache helicopters we sell. It is shared, too, with those who hear the whir of an Apache overhead or find its guns trained on them. Noam Chomsky has clarified the moral stakes in provocative, instructive terms: “We might react differently if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes ‘Jew’ and ‘Gypsy.’”Comment:  The long debate over Osama bin Laden's codename is the perfect example of Waxman's argument. We didn't code-name him "Geronimo" because we were honoring him. We did it because we considered Geronimo a ruthless savage, killer, and terrorist--like Bin Laden.

We're saying the same thing with Apache helicopters, Tomahawk missiles, and the other deadly weapons and aircraft. The're pure lethal force with no saving grace such as intelligence or compassion. They do nothing but kill.

For more on the subject, see Indians in the Military.

Religion on the way out

Religion may not survive the Internet

There's a reason churches are struggling to maintain membership, and it has nothing to do with Neil deGrasse Tyson

By Valerie TaricoIn all of the frenzy, few seem to give any recognition to the player that I see as the primary hero, or, if you prefer, culprit—and I’m not talking about science populizer and atheist superstar Neil deGrasse Tyson. Then again, maybe I am talking about Tyson in a sense, because in his various viral guises—as a talk show host and tweeter and as the face on scores of smartass Facebook memes—Tyson is an incarnation of the biggest threat that organized religion has ever faced: the internet.

A traditional religion, one built on “right belief,” requires a closed information system. That is why the Catholic Church put an official seal of approval on some ancient texts and banned or burned others. It is why some Bible-believing Christians are forbidden to marry nonbelievers. It is why Quiverfull moms home school their kids from carefully screened text books. It is why, when you get sucked into conversations with your fundamentalist uncle George from Florida, you sometimes wonder if he has some superpower that allows him to magically close down all avenues into his mind. (He does!)

Religions have spent eons honing defenses that keep outside information away from insiders. The innermost ring wall is a set of certainties and associated emotions like anxiety and disgust and righteous indignation that block curiosity. The outer wall is a set of behaviors aimed at insulating believers from contradictory evidence and from heretics who are potential transmitters of dangerous ideas. These behaviors range from memorizing sacred texts to wearing distinctive undergarments to killing infidels. Such defenses worked beautifully during humanity’s infancy. But they weren’t really designed for the current information age.

Tech-savvy mega-churches may have twitter missionaries, and Calvinist cuties may make viral videos about how Jesus worship isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship, but that doesn’t change the facts: the free flow of information is really, really bad for the product they are selling. Here are five kinds of web content that are like, well, like electrolysis on religion’s hairy toes.Another article says religion has outlived its usefulness and the Internet is only one force hastening its decline:

The Internet isn’t killing religion—religion is

Instead of asking why people aren’t religiously affiliated anymore, we might ask why they ever were

By Elizabeth DrescherWhat is missed, however, in the churning of this internet-killed-religion yarn is, first of all, that changes in complex phenomena—like being human or practicing religion in institutionalized membership-based groups—cannot be reduced to one factor or even a set of factors, no matter how diverse. Because I was a humanities major (I just had that one statistics class. Twice.), I turn to the novelist Margaret Drabble to explain what I’m getting at here:You can’t learn everything from the laboratory, that’s what he used to say. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, he told us. The whole behaves differently from the parts, and has different properties. That’s what he taught us, and he was right. It’s out of fashion to say these days, when we spend our time scrutinizing the interactions of eukaryotic microbes, but it’s true, nevertheless. It’s still true. (The Sea Lady)More significantly, the trouble with efforts that seek some root cause for what we have come to think of as an increasing decline in religious affiliation but which, when considered across a wider historical time span, turns out to be something of a normalization in affiliation patterns, is that it gets the question backwards.

That is, instead of asking why people aren’t religiously affiliated anymore, we might ask why they ever were. This question, which brings with it questions about what constitutes “religion” and “religious affiliation,” opens enquiry into the social and political construction of religious groups and the pressures borne upon ordinary people, often violently, to attend worship rather than, say, sitting in the park with family and friends enjoying the warmth of the sun, the smell of the grass, and perhaps the otherwise unlanguagable sigh of the human heart in certain moments of connection, contentedness, and wonder as a sweet piper’s tune sings into the air. It allows us, following Talal Asad’s critique of William Cantwell Smith’s conception of “faith,” to consider what elements of human experience are deliberately and incidentally left out of whatever it is we might understand as “religion” in its institutionalized forms, and why. Who is served by the various exclusions and inclusions of institutional religion? To what ends? And who is harmed?

What we might consider, then, with much more nuance and complexity than mere data manipulation can possibly tell us, is whether the idea of religion along with the institutional and ideological structures this idea has sponsored, has begun to run its course in Western culture. At the least, we might look at they ways in which other social platforms—coffee shops, cycling groups, drop-in yoga classes, and, yes, online social networking sites—have begun to reconfigure and redistribute benefits traditionally correlated with (but not necessarily caused by) religion and to mitigate its associated harms (even if also accruing harms of its own).Yet another article addresses the claims in the first two articles:

Christianity’s faith-based freakout: Why atheism makes believers so uncomfortable

Rather than respecting the right of atheists to disbelieve, Christians are constantly forcing them to fake it

By Greta ChristinaReligion relies on social consent to perpetuate itself. It’s a bad idea, and can’t stand up on its own. But it can, and does, perpetuate itself through social consent. It perpetuates itself through dogma saying that asking questions about religion is sinful, and that trusting religion without evidence is virtuous. It perpetuates itself through dogma saying that joy and meaning and morality can only be found in religion, and that leaving religion will automatically result in a desperate, amoral, pointless life. It perpetuates itself through religious communities and support systems that make believing in religion—or pretending to believe in religion—a necessity to function and indeed survive. It perpetuates itself through parents and other authority figures teaching it to children, whose brains are hard-wired to believe what they’re told.

Religion relies on social consent to perpetuate itself. But the simple act of coming out as an atheist denies it this consent. Even if atheists never debate believers or try to persuade them out of their beliefs; even if all we ever do is say out loud, “Actually, I’m an atheist,” we’re still denying our consent. And that throws a monkey wrench into religion’s engine.

There’s a reason that rates of atheism have been going up as use of the Internet goes up. (According to the MIT Technology Review, the dramatic drop in religious affiliation in the U.S. since 1990 is closely mirrored by the increase in Internet use—and while correlation certainly doesn’t prove causation, this analysis factors out pretty much every other possible causation.) The Internet has created a massive worldwide forum for atheists to argue about religion, to give evidence against religion, to ask for evidence and arguments supporting religion and point out how ridiculously weak they are. But the Internet has also created a massive, worldwide forum for atheists to simply, you know, exist.

In my research for “Coming Out Atheist,” I read numerous stories of atheists who had stayed religious for years—simply because everyone around them was religious, and they never considered the possibility that someone could be non-religious. But this is becoming less and less common. It’s getting harder and harder to keep atheism a secret. If you’re a teenager in a tiny town in the Bible Belt, you can now find out about atheists. You can talk with atheists. You can argue with atheists. You can learn what atheists think and why they think it. And you can simply learn that atheists exist, and are basically good people who love life and find great meaning in it. And that, just by itself, just by denying consent to your religion, stands a good chance of putting a serious dent in it.Comment:  These analyses apply to other irrational beliefs such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. These beliefs are also on their way out for similar reasons. The world is slowly becoming more liberal and multicultural, and there's nothing conservatives can do to stop it.

For more on the subject, see Conservative Christians in Panic Mode and Conservative Christian Persecution Fantasies.

Kansas City Chiefs next?

Woman behind fight against Washington’s NFL nickname says Chiefs should be on guard

By Sam MellingerFor now, the Chiefs are publicly silent on this. But they know the fight is likely coming, and they hope a few things work in their favor—most notably that it’s tough to compare their nickname with the one in Washington that is a dictionary-defined racial slur. Blackhorse’s group has also protested baseball’s Cleveland Indians, and that team has greatly scaled back its use of the cartoonish Chief Wahoo logo.

The Chiefs have similarly scaled back some of their more obvious plays on Indian stereotypes, and they hope they have some other advantages when the fight comes. The team is named after H. Roe Bartle, the mayor who was key in Kansas City landing the team from Dallas in 1962. Bartle’s nickname was “The Chief.”

The team stopped using a man dressed in traditional headgear as a mascot during pregame festivities many years ago. In the early 1990s, many of the Chiefs’ defensive players posed for a poster that today both looks absolutely ridiculous and would never be recreated.

The team does, however, play the tomahawk chop during games and welcomes fans in headgear and other stereotypes of Native American dress.

Those are some of the parts of the game day experience that Blackhorse calls “insane,” and why she expects a fight that’s gaining momentum and support nationally to come to Kansas City.Redskins ... Indians ... Will Native Americans target the Chiefs next?

By Sean KeelerThe Chiefs were named, in part, for former Kansas City mayor H. Roe Bartle, who was nicknamed "The Chief" and helped to lure the franchise north from Dallas.

But the team has veered on both sides of the political correctness highway in the 50 years since. "Warpaint," a pinto horse who was a staple of Chiefs games, had been ridden bareback by a man in feather headdress until the tradition was phased out in 1989. When the horse returned to Arrowhead in 2009, it was ridden by a Chiefs cheerleader, and the Native American iconography was toned down.

However, the team still includes a ceremonial drum as part of its pregame ceremony--even inviting celebrities to take turns beating it--while fans have come to home games dressed in American Indian headgear and face paint.

"I know one of the things I think the majority of Native Americans aren't happy with is the guys painting their faces and acting the fool," Learned said. "And people compare that--I hear (our people) compare that to black face. That's a pretty strong argument."Comment:  The racist fan behavior depicted below is exactly why teams need to change their names.

If teams could use a Native-oriented name with none of the associated stereotyping, the name might be okay. But that's never happened and never will happen. The stereotypical concept makes the stereotypical behavior almost certain.

Chief Wahoo faces trademark lawsuit

Native American Group Mounts $9B Lawsuit Against Cleveland Indians

By Dan KedmeyA Native American advocacy group called “People Not Mascots” is seeking $9 billion in damages against Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians.

‘We’re basing it on a hundred years of disparity, racism, exploitation and profiteering,” Robert Roche, the group’s leader, told CBS News’ Cleveland affiliate. Roche decided to press the issue after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office stripped the Washington Redskins of its trademark last Wednesday, deeming the team name a “racial slur.”

The lawsuit will also target the team’s logo and mascot, Chief Wahoo. “It’s been offensive since day one,” said Roche. “We are not mascots. My children are not mascots. We are people.”

The campaign to remove Native American caricatures from team names and logos has built up steam in recent weeks, with 50 Senators petitioning National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell to change the name of the Redskins. The Redskins vowed to appeal the USPTO ruling.Washington Redskins' trademark revocation means Chief Wahoo is on borrowed time--Bill Livingston

By Bill LivingstonIn 1992, the Indians' last season at their Tucson training camp, I visited an Indian reservation near Hi Corbett Field, carrying a team schedule with Wahoo on it to see what they thought of him.

It was not much.

The March 15, 1992 column, written from the Yaqui reservation, is not available online, although it can be found in The Plain Dealer historical archives online.

"Yes, I feel resentment. Very much so," said Anselmo Valencia, the then 70-year-old chief of the tribe. "Do I look like that? Do my people? Some of the older people here, when they first heard of the Cleveland Indians, were very proud. They thought they were all real Indians. When I told them they are almost all white people and black people, they were very offended."

Valencia spoke of the rock singer Ritchie Valens, who was almost certainly part-Yaqui, and of the light heavyweight boxer, Yaqui Lopez. "Our young people do not worship our own heroes," he said. "They see Indians portrayed in a comical way by baseball teams and other sports."

The Cleveland Indians never meant Wahoo to be offensive, of course. But, on Indian land, speaking to a real chief, asking real Indians what they thought of him, I felt deeply embarrassed.

No such stereotype could possibly exist of African-Americans or Hispanic men. They have the votes at the ballot box. That makes Wahoo a case not only of racism, but of bullying.Comment:  Among Indian team names and mascots, the biggest offenders include Chief Illiniwek, the Fighting Sioux, the Washington Redskins, and Chief Wahoo. That's two down, two to go.