Letters to the Editor
-
I Got Two Tickets to Syracuse...
If You'll Shave your Head You're Free Tonight
All power to Eddie Money.
-
Three cheers for the AP
That is indeed a fine sentence. Thank you for bringing it to our attention!
-
Good Riddance
"Politically correct is what some people call you if they don't like it when you ask them to have some respect for other people."
that is exactly how I've been feeling for years only haven't been able to explain it so succintly.
Thanks King!
as for the Illini dude, I gotta say that while it's pretty damn offensive it pretty much pales in comparison to Chief Wahoo and the Washington Redskins (honestly! as Chris Rock once said "that's like having a team called the New York N*ggers!"...mind blowingly offensive stuff).
Hopefully this is a small step in the right direction...there's nothing quite so ugly as a conqueror's mentality.
-
bye-bye Chief
Let me just add my kudos to King for his position on the U of I's Chief contretemps. I went to grad school at the U of I and witnessed the Chief fanaticism during my time in Urbana. Believe me, the Chief supporters seemed to me to be a minority among the student body. A very vocal and visible minority but a minority just the same. It seemed that most students either didn't care (like me) or were against the idea. And not to inject politics into this, oh what the hell, let me cast this in a political light: what group of students would be the most vocal, ardent and intolerant of opposing view points? Hmmmm. I give up.
-
Spare Me
A quick breeze through the letters today make me wonder if thoughtful debate is at all possible today.
We have the first letter call everyone in Central Illinois a racist (don't racists often generalize that way?) Another letter writer state that "Native Americans have made it perfectly clear to [they find Chief Illiniwek]offensive." Which isn't true, some natives do find it offensive others do not. Which brings us to the lamest argument - the hypothetical, "what if there was a team named the [insert ethnic epithet] and they had a mascot that did [insert racial stereotypical behavior]?" But there are such teams - the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, for example. Take a trip to Ireland, do a jig and talk like your selling a kids cereal and see how they respond. The San Diego Padres? As if all catholic friars just walked out of Sherwood Forest.
I actually had a diversity counselor at my company made this analogy. Chiefs were respected holy people among native groups and so she then attempted to describe some supposedly horrific stereo type of a catholic priest that actually sounded exactly like the San Diego Padre.
And I know some black people would find it cool if there were the "DC Gangstas" who came out to rap music and had a mascot in low-rider.
Political Correctness could be the way you defined it King, but I define as a paternalistic ideological movement about symbolic gestures of censorship and control that thinks anyone who doesn't agree with them is a retrograde bigot.
The other side in the Chief Illiniwek debate didn't help themselves either. They stuck in their heels and made no compromises until the inevitable happened - the Chief was banished. I mention the compromise becuase i thought an intelligent one could have been worked out. The NCAA has allowed some universities to retain their mascot if it is respectful enough. The University of Illinois could have done some research on the real Illini and perhaps come up with a mascot that did in fact honor their memory. They could put a memorial of sorts on campus in the stadium.
This may have earned them the exemption that the FSU Seminole or the University of North Dakota Sioux received.
Perhaps it was the tenor of the debate and the lack of a voice of reason in the middle that was not calling everyone who liked the Chief a racist or shouting that everyone who wanted to get rid of him was hypersensitive pantywaist that prevented this.
-
Goodbye and Good Riddance
"The real issue for most, I suspect, is that Illiniwek is a long-standing tradition. The mascot has been around since 1926, and when you mess with people's memories and traditions, they get angry. The argument is: We don't care who is offended or how anybody feels. We've always done it this way, we like doing it this way, we don't want to change it, and we think the majority should rule on this issue, provided of course that the majority agrees with us.
I actually think that's a great argument. Funny thing is, nobody ever makes it publicly. Guess they're all just too politically correct."
I think the reason nobody makes it is because it doesn't seem to work.
I didn't go to the U of I, but all my siblings did, and I consider them my Div I school (went to a D3). I always hated the Chief. "Minstrel Show" is spot on to describe it. I'm glad it's going away--I've never liked it.
That said, isn't there still the issue of the name itself? Is "Fighting Illini" not offensive? I know the NCAA hasn't ruled against that, but if we're talking about doing the right thing, shouldn't that go too?
I must admit that I would rather it didn't, just because it sounds cool, meshes with the school name, and rolls off the tongue so well ("Illinois Fightin' Illini!"). I get the impression that that's a stupid reason to keep a name that's offensive, though, so I don't know that I would oppose a change.
-
Censorship
Political Correctness could be the way you defined it King, but I define as a paternalistic ideological movement about symbolic gestures of censorship
There are certainly examples of this, but the Illini mascot isn't one. The power of the state was not, in the end, brought to bear to prohibit the mascot. The university had, and continues to have, every legal right to employ the mascot as is. Just like other institutions have the right to determine the nature of their relationship with the university.
The Chief is speech. The NCAA's decision is a consequence.