Banning Native American Mascots Essay - 526 Words

Sometime in your life, you have most likely attended a school that had some sort of mascot. These mascots, often animals, are carefully selected to represent not only the school’s competitive teams, but also the whole student body. Mascots are also used to represent professional sports teams. However, the use of Native Americans, an entire race of millions of people, as mascots is extremely insulting and should be banned. To begin with, it is racist and derogatory to use Native Americans as mascots. One town in Montana, Ronan, calls its sports teams the â€Å"Chiefs† and the â€Å"Maidens†. In several Native American cultures, maidens are considered less than or lower than women. Also, the mascots of other schools are often animals. Using Native†¦show more content†¦There are many reasons for this. First of all, people are often disrespectful to Native American religious symbols. Native Americans seem to be the only race that this happens to in this way. When there was an incident with disrespect to Notre Dame religious symbols by the Stanford University band, the offending party was punished severely. That doesn’t happen when it’s Native American religious symbols. Also, the stereotyped beliefs about Native Americans through the mascots often create treatment that pokes fun at their beliefs and traditions. One example of this is how Native American chiefs receive eagle feathers for good deeds. This is made fun of by fake â€Å"rituals† involving the mascots dancing around wearing feathered headdress. All of these thoughtless acts combine to anger the Native Americans and create a hostile environment towards them, especially when it is not happen to other races. Hostility towards a sole innocent group is extremely rude and inconsiderate. Why would we want this to continue? As I said, Native American mascots must be banned. They are derogatory and racist, and the use of them leads children to believe that racism is acceptable. 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