Article

Time to End the Game

When it comes to the damage inflicted by racist mascots and sports posturing, apologies are not enough. 

When I opened up the news story covering an Alabama high school’s racist spirit banner, I simultaneously felt anger, sadness and resolution. The sign—a giant, multicolored banner meant to intimidate an opposing football team—read, “Hey Indians, get ready to leave in a TRAIL OF TEARS Round 2.”

As I read through the story, I reacted by mentally blaming various involved parties. “The cheerleading coach and the administration are to blame here,” I thought to myself. “Who was supervising the cheerleaders when they designed, planned and displayed the banner? Any adult within the immediate vicinity could have stopped the cheerleaders from finishing the construction of this massive sign.”

“Teachers and curriculum are to blame,” I continued fuming. “We aren’t doing a good enough job representing minority voices and helping students create empathy toward their fellow humans!” But I still wasn’t done. “History is to blame! Colonization is to blame! Media networks and capitalist greed are to blame!”

When I finally finished my internal tirade, the result of all this anger was complete sadness. I feel sad that no adult stepped in—either because they didn’t know or didn’t care enough about our country’s maltreatment of Native Americans to refuse to erect a banner that carelessly alluded to one of the most painful episodes in our nation’s past. I feel sad that the students themselves didn’t know or weren’t sensitive enough to understand the impact of their words.  

But most of all, I feel sad and angry that—after years and years of controversy surrounding the renaming of teams with Native American mascots—this incident was still possible. This situation proves there can be no more support for team names that marginalize and stereotype. They all need to go. The Indians, the Redskins, the Braves. They need to be renamed, and they need to be renamed now.

Every time we use these names we perpetuate the injustice and racism of our past. What is needed in this situation is not an official apology and a tighter rein on cheerleaders or pep squads, but a widespread recognition that these names propagate harm in the name of money-making and nominal tradition.

Enough is enough. The time for playing games over team names is up: They need to be changed now.

Ricket is a high school English teacher in Ohio.

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