Offensive Team Nicknames

This is tricky topic. On the one hand, the NCAA in announcing its categorical prohibition on indigenous American nicknames has come off as officious, doctrinaire and blindly adherent to the silly dictates of political correctness. On the other hand, the NCAA has a point. Some of these nicknames seem little more than slurs. I detest the political correctness movement in the same instinctive way I abhor any totalitarian claims. But still, basic charity and considerateness suggests some of these teams should find a new identity.

Let's look at this issue from a couple of angles:

1. One issue with the native American nicknames is that they're caricatures (much like "Cavalier," "Pirate," "Yankee," etc.). For instance, the nickname "Braves" would seem an accurate, descriptive and dignified word. Yet the term captures an image of a tomahawk-bearing, warpaint-wearing, horse-riding male member of a plains tribe with which the American immigrants and settlers came in contact as they moved west. I've met a number of native americans in my work (mostly from the river tribes of the Northwest) and have yet to see one adorned in anything close to such garb, and unless I attend a ceremonial event most likely never will. These braves aren't contemporary Indians, they're historical artifacts, or maybe a caricature of historical artifacts.

2. So one question is should non-native Americans have access to or appropriate those artifacts for their own (largely commercial) purposes? Or instead do the tribes "own" these artifacts? One attribute of ownership is the right of alienation. Could an Indian tribe sell the right to these artifacts to a sports team? If the answer is that a team need not purchase an "Indian" nickname from an Indian tribe, then that fact is strongly suggestive that the tribe does not own these historical caricatures. A new sports team tomorrow could call itself the Braves or even the Sioux or Seminoles, apparently without further obligation. (Ironically, the sports teams that appropriate the Indian names have asserted intellectual property rights in the name: you can't just start marketing "Florida Seminoles" football jerseys without a license from the University.)

3. If it's true that the contemporary Indian tribes do not own their ancestral caricatures (no more than I, as a native New Englander, own "Yankee"), should they be offended when sports teams employ those caricatures as nicknames? Can one be offended by another's legal conduct? Yes, of course. But requests for amelioration of the slight are not grounded in legality, but in good manners or polite social relations. That is why the NCAA's clumsy employment of a strict rule seemed so heavy-handed, given the nature of the perceived slight.

4. With that said, judgment is needed. Some nicknames are unnecessarily offensive and should be done away with. It is difficult to understand "redskin" as anything but derogatory. Historically, Indians would refer to their own race as "red," in contrast to the "whites." But in contemporary social intercourse, describing a person along the dimension of race or color is rude, both because it draws attention to an immutable characteristic and because it threatens to set the person apart from others. No one who was raised right would refer to a group of native Americans as "those red skins." Even if one wanted to identify the group as a group, one could refer to their tribe membership in terms that didn't draw attention to skin color.

5. In the same vein, some of the historical caricatures sports teams employ also seem unduly unkind. Images of Indian braves in full headdress howling, mouth agape, do not present a pleasant picture; of course contemporary Indians will not like it. Again, no one has to make that change; we can make fun of each other as much as we want, pretty much with impunity. But let's be reasonable: the historical treatment of the natives by the white immigrants was in many cases utterly shameful. I now live in the Northwest, and the deal the Nez Perce got was about as raw as can be. This is a tribe that was nothing but helpful to early American settlers, and without whose help these settlers, and the Lewis and Clark expedition that preceded them, would never have survived the difficult immigration over the Rockies and the harsh Bitterroots. Yet, to put it bluntly, this large tribe was forcibly kicked off its designated reservation (where it had been located forever) once the settlers realized they had allocated to the tribe some very nice real estate. Let's be blunt, white people: there's something owed to Native Americans. We can go a little out of our way to be considerate, especially on something as inconsequential as the nickname for a sports team.

6. I guess some tribes have consented to the use of their name (the "Seminoles"), and in that case, the continued use is legitimate because the team is using the specific name of a specific tribe. More generic nicknames (Braves, Indians) cannot be subject to consent because the group is too diffuse. So I only buy the consent defense in limited cases. Plus some of the more objectionable images are coarsening and affect more people than just native Americans.