Institutionalized Racism

Hello Everyone,

  In the Off-Topic forum where I commented on the GEICO cavemen being a real-world parable to the treatment of American Indians, I remarked that this could possibly be a blog topic.  Well, I suppose I could start with a letter that I wrote to the Editor of the Orlando Sentinel which was printed in Sunday's paper.  It relates to the NCAA decision to ban Chief Osceola and Chief Illiniwek and the public outcry at the time.  This letter includes some of the salient points I raised about being the caveman.  When this was printed in the Sunday paper at the time, it was printed opposite the letter from Senator Mel Martinez who just happened to be an FSU alum.  There's a few other issues relating to Natives (and gaming, remember Turok?), and I'll get to those next week.  And yes, for those of you who follow the news out of Illinois, Chief Illiniwek is dead.  Now, about them FSU boys...

From August, 2005.

Jeb Bush and the people of Florida need some help understanding the issue behind the recent NCAA decision against Native American themed mascots.  For the past several days, I’ve read the reactions of not only the Orlando Sentinel columnists, but also the readership as the NCAA has been ridiculed and people on the side of the Native Americans in this issue decried as whiners.

Lets cover the basics:  this continent used to be red from sea to shining sea.  In the past 500 years, Native Americans were subjected to an American holocaust and nearly wiped out as a distinct race of people.  In the United States, Native Americans have been reduced to 1% of the general population.  One of the basic and generally understood human rights is that a distinct people should have the right to dictate how they are represented and portrayed.

Initially vilified and denounced as less than human by the media in an effort to support the government’s policy of extermination in colonial times; the image of Native Americans would later be romanticized after the perceived threat that Native Americans posed to this country’s new immigrants eased.  With the explosion of modern media behind the introduction of films and later television, the image of Native Americans was taken from us.  Natives were not asked or consulted when movie and television portrayals represented to the world what our people were like.  The end result is institutionalized racism that has resulted in other races and cultures manipulating and exploiting Natives as they please.

Other minorities have had much more political and financial clout than the Native community.  In the past couple of decades, those groups have been successful in reclaiming their sense of self and identity as a people.  They pushed social and political reforms to get the general population to recognize their basic human right to dictate how they should be represented and portrayed.  In many instances institutional racism for other races has all but disappeared.

In these modern times, Native Americans are a forgotten minority.  No one takes us seriously anymore, but we’re serious when we address the issues that face our culture.  While the NCAA decision seems to have just fallen from the sky for those people who have supported Florida State University over the years, the work by the National Congress of American Indians and the National Coalition Against Racism in Sports and Media have been pushing this very issue for decades.

Complicating this issue and lending credence to the position of many folks in this state is the support of the Seminole Nation and their elected chief for Florida State University.  I can understand their side of the issue, but then again, the people of this state also have to realize that this tribal leader does not speak for all Native Americans and this man’s opinion is definitely in the minority in Indian country.

Please let it be understood in no uncertain terms that Native Americans want to end institutionalized racism for their people.  They want the same dignities and respect now afforded other cultures that have also struggled against racism.  Putting some guy on horseback in a multi-colored outfit and having him do a little spear-chucking is a demeaning and insulting depiction.  Fortunately, the NCAA has no respect for this kind of tradition.