Of Redskins and Irishmen

I never understood how people backed the Redskins name. It's so obviously racist. I've heard the argument that it isn't necessarily derogatory. Certainly it isn't "nigger" or "kike", and not even "wop" or "mick". But we don't have the "Cincinnati Darkies" nor the "Atlanta Whiteys". Why should we ever lump an entire group of people all in by skin color? You can do your own research on the etymology of the name, but it boils down to making a mascot out of an entire race of people by their skin color. I never understood that. It's (past) time for it to go.

I have mixed feelings about using Native American iconography at all. For example, I understand that Florida State has a very good relationship and open dialog with the Seminole tribe in using their name. I know that the University of North Dakota abandoned the Sioux name after it could not get approval from all neighboring Sioux tribes. ( I have to note here that 'Dakota' is literally one of the linguistic divisions of the Greater Sioux nation, so one of the suggestions in their entire naming controversy was to just call the teams 'North Dakota' as 'North Dakota Sioux' was simply redundant.) I can understand arguments both for and against the Blackhawks, the Braves, the Indians. Those aren't blatantly racist and contemptuous. I could even attempt to hear an argument for the "Tomahawk Chop" cheer of Braves fans. (I dunno. I'd listen, but I'm pretty close-minded to those particular shenanigans. "The Indians" kind of too - I wouldn't really understand the argument behind that mascot. I'd try. [No, I wouldn't.] I like that "Caucasians" t-shirt one can buy that mocks the Cleveland Indians.) Redskins, though, is a racist, pejorative term. It may not have started that way (again, feel free to do your own research) but it has been used that way for over a hundred years. Has to go.

In a Facebook post I brought up the fact that everyone seems to completely ignore "The Fighting Irish". It broke down into a thread about the merits or lack thereof of the Redskins moniker. I should know better. (I should know better than to say anything slightly political in a Facebook post. Though how this is even a political issue is absolutely stunning to me. [I should say, it WAS stunning until I thought about it more and realized I shouldn't be so surprised.] I should also know better than to say anything that goes a slight bit against the tide of the social discourse of the day, which has turned into more tide than actual discourse. Don't say anything against it nor even something tangential to today's topic - you'll just be trying to swim across an overwhelming current. Just nod your head and go with it.) The Rice name is Orange Irish. I'm pretty sure our family went over to the Emerald Isle and beat (and worse) the Catholic into servitude. So I'm not going to feign any sort of indignation at the name "Fighting Irish". What perplexes me is that I don't understand why people ignore the mascot of Notre Dame but are incensed that North Dakota would use "The Fighting Sioux".

The Fighting Irish is no less a pejorative than the Fighting Sioux (though both, to me, are much less so than Redskins). One of the stories of how Notre Dame athletes gained the moniker is that Northwestern students taunted their team with "Kill the Fighting Irish" during a game in 1899. (There have been many proud days in Northwestern history, but that doesn't sound like one of them.) Another is that Notre Dame's own coach used the stereotype when he said to his team during a game in 1909, this time against Michigan, "What’s the matter with you guys? You’re all Irish and you’re not fighting worth a lick.” In 2005 the NCAA went forward with sanctions on just about anyone with a Native American mascot including the Fighting Sioux of North Dakota, but said nothing about Notre Dame.

Anytime the NCAA does something about anything I first assume it's about money. Why doesn't anyone else take notice of it, however? What doesn't anyone, Irish or otherwise say, "Hey, why are you holding onto that old stereotype anyway?" (I have my personal suspicions.) You will notice that the media hardly ever adds the "Fighting" part in anymore, particularly NBC, simply calling them "The Irish" more often than not. But Notre Dame's athletics web page is titled "Notre Dame Athletics | The Fighting Irish". I realize that I've written a lot about Notre Dame now on the day the Washington Redskins gave up their mascot, but here's the reason - It makes doing something that is completely right, like standing against the Redskins name, look hypocritical. It smacks of political correctness instead of simply what it is - Correctness. I'm not suggesting that we change every athletics mascot name that might offend someone in someway. I'm saying that if we are going to have a conversation about removing racially or ethnically disparaging names and The Fighting Irish doesn't even enter the conversation, people need to ask themselves why.

Juneteenth

I am reminded today, June 19th --Juneteenth, Freedom Day -- of the visit that Jen and I made to the Whitney Plantation when we went to New Orleans. It is a trip I would recommend anyone visiting New Orleans should make. In fact, I'd recommend it as the focus of a trip that every American should make. 

It isn't a trip to be made lightly. National Geographic compares it to making a trip to Auschwitz . I would imagine that the contemplation of any human being treated as less than human is going to evoke similar emotions in anyone with a shred of empathy. For as much reading and learning of slavery we have had in schools, it doesn't prepare you for the gut punch of seeing a price list of people.

There is, I think, this myth that we white Americans like to hold onto that slave owners actually treated their slaves relatively humanely, and that it was really only some particularly cruel owners that treated them badly. After all, a dead slave was no good to the owner, right? The truth that one learns at Whitney is that in almost every case, slave owners simply treated slaves as a commodity, cogs in a wheel of a machine that, in Louisiana, was used to turn sugar cane into sugar, a grueling and particularly dangerous process. Yes, while plantation owners did not want their machinery to wear out early, they were horribly practical in the life-expectancy of those cogs. People did not live long while working the cane fields, a handful of years maybe, ten to twelve at most. The phrase "being sold down the river" came from the slave experience of being sold down into the cane fields of Louisiana from cotton plantations further north. 

I compared the entire explanation of slave ownership by our guide at Whitney to my experience owning a car: I don't want to treat my car poorly. I'm really pretty fond of my 2012 Ford Fusion. It was a pretty dear investment. At eight years old, though, I know it's getting to the end of its lifespan. I know I'll move on and get something else in a couple years. To think, even now, that this is how plantation owners felt about people, and that I could conjure up such a comparison now, quite literally nauseates me.

I was very impressed with our guide at Whitney. A young black man, he gave us what I believe was really the unvarnished truth and a horrible sense of what it was like to live at Whitney. There was no need to embellish the awful facts. They were laid out before you like the price list I mentioned or the tiny slave quarters or the "hot box" chamber mentioned in the National Geographic article. Stands of the sugar cane with its razor-like leaves were right there, and the treeline past the fields that led away into the swamps that would beckon slaves to freedom or death, either way escape from their condition, still stands out there. 

This is the story of my slave benefactor at Whitney, Chris Franklin. I say benefactor because Mr. Franklin paid a very costly price in order to provide me a single afternoon of education. I am very grateful. Reading that story, one might say, "It wasn't all THAT bad. They even got extra potatoes and egg nog at Christmas." Then you compare that to Mr. Franklin's impression of how well he felt the master kept his hounds. Slaves were treated no better than dogs. The master was fine to marry off a couple because he knew it meant additional litters of slaves for him.

None of us are free until all of us are free. That is a great sentiment to carry forth today. In a literal sense I'm sure we are all appalled at the idea of a man, woman, or child being manacled in an iron box on a hundred degree day. We have a ways to go to stamp out ignorance and injustice still, however. The focus, of late, has been on the police profession. The police do have the ability to use force that is immediately apparent. However, discrimination still pervades every industry in America. It is still apparent in the retail industry, for example. For, as progressive a company as Nordstrom is, I am still reminded that only two years ago black teens looking to buy clothes for prom were racially profiled by Rack employees. Even so, I believe that the discrimination in the legal, medical, and especially the media is as damaging, if not more so, than by police.

So we need to look at ourselves and our own sense of humanity. My religion is built on empathy and loving-kindness. In just writing that I am reminded also that I am a sinner. I need to practice.

Stone Mountain

I haven't been to Mount Rushmore. Not yet. I have been to the Mount Rushmore of the South, Stone Mountain, Georgia. It was on one of the trips down from Michigan to see my aunt who lives outside of Atlanta we made when I was a kid. I don't remember much clearly about the trip, nor exactly how old I was, probably eight or ten. I do remember after learning that the enormous sculpture on the mountain is of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, that they should have just added Darth Vader as well. If you were going to have a big sculpture of those three villains, because that is how I was brought up to think of them, you might as well add the worst villain I could think of at the time. What were these people down south thinking? It also happens that Stone Mountain was the place of the rebirth of the KKK in 1915 shortly before they began work on the huge sculpture.

Since that time I've learned a lot more about the Civil War and the men who fought it, as well as about human nature as well. The reasons for the war were complex. I'm not one of those who will say that it really wasn't fought over slavery; it was. But the Confederate army wasn't comprised of plantation owners either. It was made up largely of men who owned no slaves at all. Robert E. Lee was offered command of the Union army before turning it down to fight for his home state of Virginia, and his own views on slavery were extremely complex. Interestingly, he emancipated the slaves at his Arlington plantation, just days before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves which had come down as an inheritance, which had originated with Martha Washington, to his wife. This wasn't out of the good of his heart, though, as he was acting as executor for the estate of his father-in-law who had said in his final will they should be given their freedom.

The institution of slavery is a horrible scar on our American history, one that we will never be rid of, no matter how much we would like to forget it. I think it is important to learn of the horrors of it, not because we are otherwise doomed to repeat our history. Those lessons though are what make me sensitive to the hatred in the current rhetoric of White Pride and this new nationalism. What I hear in the the rhetoric of these "alt-right" protesters of today is that of the plantation owners saying that "really this is about states' rights and our niggers are better off here where we take care of them than out in that world they are just not equipped to manage."

There was talk for a while that the bas relief of Davis, Lee, and Jackson should be blasted off the side of Stone Mountain. Personally, I hope it stays. It is a provocative piece of art in a beautiful, yet equally provocative setting. I hope future young visitors will visit and wonder why someone thought these men were important enough for such a memorial.

The catalyst for the protests in Charlottesville, VA, is apparently the decision by the town to begin removing Confederate memorials including a statue of Lee. I can see the arguments for and against removal of statues like that. I said above that I'd hate to see the sculpture at Stone Mountain go, but I equally would not be comfortable living in a town that had a statue of Lee. I believe it best left to the individuals who live in the community to decide what they want their community to be like. It's disgusting that the protesters who have congregated in Virginia are largely not from there and include groups from my home state of Michigan.

Those protesters are feeding off hatred. The entire alt-right, neo-nationalist movement is feeding off hatred. I say, don't give in to this hatred. It's difficult, because I can't think of those protesters down there without hateful words coming to mind. Change doesn't come through hatred though. Real change comes through loving compassion, regardless of how difficult that is to find. I leave you with the link to this story, which is more profound given the events of today: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-befriends-kkk-documentary-accidental-courtesy_us_585c250de4b0de3a08f495fc.