On "Casual Racism" in Sports and More

The other day my husband asked me if I thought that the Washington Redskins team should change its name. My response (to several people) has always been that I'd never really thought about it before, and even now I can't say that the name offends me. But I think the more important question is whether it matters if individuals like me aren't offended: the point is that many people are offended. After watching the "NMAI Symposium on Racism and Cultural Appropriation in Sports," I feel that Dr. Jackson makes a great point in saying that "the issue is that some are offended," and that that's a good enough reason for a name change to occur. Names like the New York Jews and San Francisco Chinamen have been done away with (some still exist, like the "Arabs" at this California school), but for some reason Native American mascots are still largely considered appropriate. Our reasons for perpetuating negative stereotypes are just downright absurd. See the following clip from W. Kamau Bell's show "Totally Biased" (I found this on indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com):

I think one of the helpful strategies we can take from the symposium is that the dominant group must join in protest against racist stereotypes. Why have there been over 30 years of dispute over the "Redskins" name without any resolution? Why do people still think this is okay? 1. Money. Especially at the pro level. 2. These racist ideas are ingrained in American culture and our psyches. Dr. Staurowsky accurately terms this "casual racism."."  Why is racism in sports “casual”? The scholars of the symposium point out that people often use origin stories to justify the existence of racist mascots. Even the one lady in the “Totally Biased” slip justifies keeping the Redskins’ name because “it’s tradition” (also, sadly, because that couple of ladies think that if Indians are so offended, why haven’t they said anything? Facepalm.). Dr. King rightly points out that we should focus on “impact” rather than “intention,” because obviously the intention in the origin stories cannot justify the harm being done to actual people.

If we allow such casual racism to exist in our society, Dr. Jackson wonders, “What do we pass onto the next generation?” Is a legacy of racism something we want those generations to inherit? If not, changes must be made now. Native Americans must be represented in a positive, non-stereotypical light, or not at all. This idea ties in wonderfully to the issue represented in this Crest commercial:

Indian Country Today Media Network illuminates the significance:

What's wrong with this picture? All but one of the kids are dressed as things that are imaginary, or historical (if not extinct), or whimsical, or generic. Just one of them is attired as a stand-in for a living people -- a living people who are still living, despite the U.S. government's efforts to kill them off. And yes, some of these people do, today, wear a feather headdress or paint their faces in ceremonial gatherings, although many do not.Kids look cute dressed as bumblebees, or robots, or ninjas, and there's little danger that their fertile minds will form opinions about these things they will carry into adulthood. But what of the little Indian? What does his costume teach? If this is what an Indian looks like, does that define, for children, what all Indians are? Can an Indian be a lawyer? Do Indians live in houses? Do Indians speak proper English, drive cars, or even wear underwear? (And how come he doesn't have a dead crow on his head like in the movie?)
It's simply irresponsible to take a diverse and modern population -- a whole race -- and sum it up in a cartoony dime-store costume for a seven-year-old child. Racism, most often, starts at home, and while allowing a kid to dress as "an Indian" seems less controversial than allowing a kid to dress as "an African American" or "an Asian," it's the same thing. Parents (and the people at Crest toothpaste) might not feel they are maliciously reducing Native Americans to a stereotype -- but malice or not, it's exactly what they are doing when they permit such a costume, and it's an insensitivity about race they're instilling in the young.
There's a reason why so many Americans struggle to see the racism that American Indians feel on a daily basis: It's always been there. It's been there since we were all kids. We grew up with it.

 The stereotypical representations of Indians are an example of what Gerald Vizenor terms "manifest manners...the course of dominance, the racialist notions and misnomers sustained in archives and lexicons as 'authentic' representations of indian cultures. Manifest manners court the destinies of monotheism, cultural determinism, objectivism, and the structural conceits of savagism civilization" (from Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance, page vii).

We don't want to pass "manifest  manners" on to future generations. What we need to do is educate people on the reality of Indians--that they are still here, and they exist in many different cultural contexts. We can start with sports teams and Halloween costumes.

According to Vizenor:

Native American Indians have endured the envies of missionaries of manifest manners for five centuries. The Boy Scouts of America, the wild simulations of tribal misnomers used for football teams, automobiles, and other products, Western movies, and the heroic adventures in novels...are just a few examples of the manifold envies that have become manifest manners in the literature of dominance. (31)

So in the case of sports, racial stereotypes of Native Americans often emphasize those "manifold envies," portraying the "strength," "savagism," "primitiveness," and "nobility" represented through the dominant ideology of manifest manners. Needless to say, these attributes aren't real. Contemporary Indians are real. But what ideas of Native Americans are we passing on to future generations? Vizenor claims that Indians are responsible for asserting survivance—“an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry” (vii). The perpetuation of Indian representation through the discourse of dominance (i.e. in sports and advertisements) undermines postindian survivance, and instead expresses manifest manners (think of “casual racism” as the dominant discourse).

Check out this cool example of postindian survivance in action:

So next, let’s consider a movie. 23 years ago this month, Dances with Wolves was released to the public. Vizenor claims that the movie “counts on the bankable manifest manners of the audience to associate with the adventures and dsicoveries of an errant cavalry officer who counters the simulations of savagism in his stories…Manifestly, movies have never been the representations of tribal cultures; at best, movies are the deliverance of an unsure civilization” (6).

Not to say that I completely agree or disagree with Vizenor, but I believe these changes in portrayals of real Indians are in a constant state of evolution. Dances no doubt contains inaccuracies about Native Cultures during the Civil War era, but it sure does something to represent Indians as something closer to human to more contemporary audiences (who then, hopefully, can begin to understand that real Indians may still actually exist today).

ICTMN sure seems to have something to say about everything I discuss in this post, but I need to bring in another one of its articles about Dances with Wolves:

 Leslie D. Hannah, Cherokee, developed a podcast through Kansas State University that featured some of the long lasting outcomes of the film and described his “love/late” relationship with it. “I love that American Indians were finally recognized as human beings but I hate that it happened under these circumstances.”

Hannah said Dances With Wolves opened up people’s eyes, but more importantly it opened their minds. “Dances With Wolves made it cool to be Indian,” he said, noting that paradigm shifted as soon as the movie came out.
The circumstances relate to the fact that Indians have been telling their own stories for years, but it took a white, wealthy filmmaker to bring the reality of Natives to the world. “It took a white man to prove what Indians had been saying all along, Indians are human.”
….
For Ebert, the real shift in consciousness is that the film’s main character, Lieutenant John J. Dunbar, played by Costner, “is able to look another man in the eye and see the man, rather than his attitudes about the man.”

What do we think? Is this indeed progress? I like to think so. The movie still perpetuates stereotypes about Indians, but at least it's getting to the heart of Indians as thinking, feeling people. I think that this movie was a significant step away from manifest manners, but truly, contemporary Native Americans writing and sharing their own stories are simulations of survivance that we still need.