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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCarmelo Anthony calls on 6 teams to drop Native American names, including Warriors
Former Syracuse basketball star Carmelo Anthony is calling on six major sports teams to drop Native American mascots and nicknames, including the NBAs Golden State Warriors.
We are not equal until all our communities are equal. In support of our Native American communities, the use of Native mascot names needs to end, Melo wrote on Twitter Wednesday.
He tagged the Washington Redskins and the NFLs official Twitter accounts in the tweet, which included a photo of six names crossed out representing two MLB teams (Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians); two NFL teams (R*dsk*ns, Kansas City Chiefs); one NHL team (Chicago Blackhawks); and one NBA team (Warriors).
Eliminate all native mascots, the image said.
Link to tweet
https://www.syracuse.com/sports/2020/07/carmelo-anthony-calls-on-6-teams-to-drop-native-american-mascots-including-warriors.html?outputType=amp
misanthrope
(7,405 posts)like "soldier" or "fighter." It doesn't specify nation, ethnicity or culture.
sakabatou
(42,082 posts)tulipsandroses
(5,092 posts)of sports teams
For the life of me, I don't know what the obsession was with Native Americans.
They dropped the Logo, they kept the name. -But originally the logo was a caricature
VOX
(22,976 posts)In 1997, the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District passed a resolution banning the use of Native American mascots and nicknames. The ban withstood a federal court challenge, forcing University High (Warriors to Wildcats), Gardena High (Mohicans to Panthers), Birmingham High (Braves to Patriots) and Wilmington Middle School (Warriors to Jaguars) to change nicknames.
However, the California Racial Mascots Act, which would have eliminated Native American mascots and nicknames statewide, was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
TygrBright
(20,733 posts)Response to JonLP24 (Original post)
marie999 This message was self-deleted by its author.
brush
(53,470 posts)Indians? Is that a pejorative?
tulipsandroses
(5,092 posts)ms liberty
(8,478 posts)And they have been GS for quite a while and doesn't use any racist logos,. The word warrior isn't racist in and of itself. I agree with others that it doesn't need to change. Where GS is concerned, the real question is "what does Steph Curry want?" Whatever that is, that's what they should do!
tulipsandroses
(5,092 posts)people are. I strongly disagree that it depends on what Steph Curry wants. He is not Native American.
If there are Native Americans are are bothered by this.They ought to be heard. I don't know if they are. I think their voices are diminished and often overlooked when we talk about race issues. I don't think we should be dismissive and say they have been in GS a long time. The racial wounds in this country are still here.
ms liberty
(8,478 posts)If Native Americans want it changed, they can make that case, I'm happy to hear them out and now is the time. Melo isn't really their representative though, now is he? Since Steph is the face of the GSW and one of the best in the game, he ultimately will have more say than most anyone else involved with the team on this issue. He's also a good guy.
But I personally think the use of the team name Warriors is not a slur anyway. The word is not derogatory. We call veterans warriors. Breast cancer survivors? Warriors. Ninth century vikings? Well, they're warriors, too. Warrior has a positive connotation in our language.
YMMV
tulipsandroses
(5,092 posts)race, sexual orientation, religion, etc should speak up for what they think is a wrong.
Context in this case is important. I doubt Carmelo was thinking about the use of the term as it applies to the entire English language. Moreso, the history of its racist use in sports. I don't think we all are having the same conversation here.
The NBAs Philadelphia Warriors were born in 1946 and for decades used a cartoon rendering of an American Indian as their logo. When the franchise moved to San Francisco, in 1962, the team name remained but the logo changed to a blue headdress.
][link:[link:https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/redskins/2020/07/08/washington-new-nfl-team-name-warriors-is-non-starter/5389663002/
The above article was about renaming that team in Washington. The writer wanted to emphasize not going from one racist name to using another name with a racist history in sports.
Interestingly
This writer went on to make the argument that it was OK for Golden State to use this name, because they and other NBA teams had ditched their disrespectful images and had several different logos over the years including the golden gate bridge. I'm probably reaching, but I get the feeling the writer was implying that the NBA had already done the work moving away from these disrespectful symbols.
I'm posting these articles so people can see context and history and see that he's not just pulling stuff out of his ass. You can still disagree with him, given the context.
(This article below is actually from a few years ago, funny you would think it was written just recently)
Let me illustrate with the history of my own university. The sports teams at Marquette University have had a number of nicknames down through the decades. They were the Hilltoppers for a while. (Lame!). From 1911 until '54, the football team came to be known as The Golden Avalanche. (Cool! Also, that particular moniker lent itself to a legendary campus dive that didnt close until 1997.) Finally, in 1954, the school settled on calling its teams The Warriors, and they were represented by a papier-mâché-headed mock Native American named Willie Wampum. Beginning in 1961, this grotesque cavorted on the sidelines at Marquette basketball games for a decade. By the early '70s, however, with student activism at high tide and the American Indian Movement beginning to strengthen itself all over the Midwest, Fr. James Groppi, a prominent Milwaukee activist, began a campaign to retire Willie Wampum, who was placed into storageGod knows wherein 1971. The school maintained the Warriors name, even briefly employing an actual Native American student at the games, until 1993, when it rather lost its mind for a brief moment.
For some reason, the university decided to drop Warriors entirely, replacing it with the Marquette Golden Eagles. There was a rather universal outrage among students and alumni. (After all, a Warrior could be anything, from a Viking chieftain to an Ostrogoth.) Eleven years later, the student body tried one last time to bring back the Warriors. The universitys trustees resisted and, in one of the worst PR blunders in the history of college athletics, changed the name of the teams to the Marquette Gold, which sounded less like an athletic program, and more like a particularly strong brand of marijuana. Outrage and mockery descended in equal measure. They brought back Golden Eagles, and that was the end of it.
My point is that organized sports have been wrestling with this profound question in public for longer than the political world has
][link:https://sports.yahoo.com/sports-rest-u-still-struggles-011816788.html|
BGBD
(3,282 posts)Washington and Clevelend should change their names and logos as they are blatantly still racist. However, Braves, Warriors, Chiefs, and Blackhawks are not. The first three could all clearly be seen as paying honor to a group of people and the last is a literal person who lived in the region where the team is now.
I don't see the issue here, what are these team nicknames doing at this moment that is harming anyone? We live in a world where cops have been given near impunity to murder black people with no need for a defense other than "I felt threatened." whether that is believable or not. A world where being the wrong shade of brown within a few hundred miles of the border might get you thrown out of the country, citizen or not. Where the color of your skin at birth changes the odds that you will graduate from HS, how much you will get paid, and if you'll go to jail.
I think we have plenty to issues to keep us busy before we worry about how some NBA team got its name and what the logo looked like 60 years ago. We have public opinion on our side for the first time in a long time, and we're going to screw that up by going after things that most people are going to see as frivolous. It's the exact kind of thing that racists will use to mute the movement.
ProfessorGAC
(64,419 posts)The Teutons were warriors.
William Wallace was a warrior
In the Shogun era, the defense group were samurai warriors.
What all these have in common is that were not from North America.
There has not been a hint of exploitation by that team for at least 4 decades.
Stupid fight to pick, by Anthony.
misanthrope
(7,405 posts)I am not being a smart ass, I am genuinely curious.
I've never heard of any push back against Notre Dame for using a nickname clearly based in ethnic stereotyping. But just because I don't recall it doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
ProfessorGAC
(64,419 posts)Like you, I haven't heard of such a thing. But, that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
cabot
(724 posts)Our people do fight a lot.
rockfordfile
(8,682 posts)cabot
(724 posts)Chieftains, police chiefs, etc.