It’s Saturday at my house and the TV is on the regular sports channel. Sport is a multimillion-dollar industry, and an entertainment industry. Not just because of the sport or the game itself, but for everything that comes with it, like the mascots, the clothing lines, the cheerleaders and the dancers. One thing is for sure, we love our sports. Thanksgiving is right around the corner and one thing we can be sure of is that a large group of the population is going to watch the football game and wait for the turkey. Sport is part of our culture and our athletes are often considered celebrities. We socialize our children through sports, and the rules of team sport build character. The Super bowl, with its advertisements each year, has turned into a subculture of its own and is a huge event for the advertising industry. Most of us have at one time in life belonged to a sports team. It might be as far back as little league, but even so, we experienced the belonging to a sports team. Sport is often thought of as being for everybody, with no regards to gender, sex, minority or ethnicity. Sport is without racism and discrimination, and all that matters is to participate, not to win.
But oh, hold on! That is only little league! High school sports, university sports and professional sports are all about winning and making the moneymaking fans happy. The reality is that even in sports, we see racism and gender differences all the way from university sports to the recent winter Olympics in Canada.
Every sports team has its own distinct color, name and mascot. It is associated with belonging and the team spirit. The thing is, that many of these mascots and team names are offensive to some parts of our society. Native American symbols and images are often used in sports settings. On the webpage, http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/09/22/some-native-american-sports-mascots/ you can see some of the mascots and logos. The main argument in this blog is that the American Indian Chiefs that are used as mascots at different schools around the nation, have little or nothing to do with the actual culture and dance rituals of the Native Americans. The mascots are used as a crowd pleaser and there is no regard to the fact that this is offensive to Native Americans. “Sports Illustrated” has done a poll on the subject of mascots, and guess what? The findings are that only the tribal leaders of American Natives found this practice with mascots offensive. The majority of the Native Americans and other sports fans did not. Well, that sounds all fine, but hold on! “Sports Illustrated” refused to provide information on how the poll was made, and how data was collected. It might be important to know where in the US this survey was done. Was there even any Native Americans asked in this poll? Then again, what do I know, nobody asked me! The thing is, we never hear complaints about names or mascots like The Vikings or the Fighting Irish. Maybe Native Americans are making this little mascot out to be a lot more than he really is, and maybe “Sports Illustrated” had a point when they mentioned that Native Americans Chiefs were the only ones interested in the mascots. If so, then maybe these chiefs are just making a lot of “huha” for nothing. The mascots could also be seen as a symbol for our joint culture and the multicultural country we all live in.
“The Fighting Irish” is the mascot of Notre Dame University. Have a look at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?s=sports+and+discrimination. The argument in this article is that the Irish don’t face discrimination any longer, like the Native Americans. Also, the main difference is that the Irish don’t oppose the use of this mascot. Native Americans, on the other hand, clearly oppose the use of mascots. Another argument in the article is that there are so many mascots that are Native American symbols and so few that are from other groups of society.
Many of the mascots that are used today have a long tradition in schools and teams. I can see how the schools are reluctant to change them, because they have become such a trademark and an established tradition of the team spirit. But even so, we should at least keep this “protest” in mind, and not name or use new Native American symbols for new teams or sports events. It seems to be the least we could do if not change the names and mascots all together. But no! Look no further than to the symbol of the winter Olympics 2010 in Canada and the symbol chosen for this event. The image can be seen at the webpage; http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?s=winter+olympics. The article states that the logo for the Olympics is an altered version of traditional Arctic Inuit sculptures. This gives the false impression that the natives are respected, empowered, and well integrated in Canadian society, when in fact they are not. Through the Olympics, the native culture has been given an edited and re-packaged image in order to generate money for the Olympics. According to the article, the way this was marketed resembled a “soup-like caricature” because of the mixture of different Native cultures. The Olympics combined different cultures into one and sold it off as the same native culture, maybe also implying it to be the only Native culture in Canada. The thing is that the arctic Inuit sculpture on the Logo stems from a native culture that did not even inhabit British Colombia, the province in Canada where the Olympics were held. The Native people of Canada signed a protest against the use of the logo for the Olympics and the slogan “No Olympics On Stolen Land” was used by the Natives to discourage the use of the logo.
As we know, the logo was used and one could wonder why? According to the article it seems that monetary gain and the need for showing a harmonious vision of a multicultural Canada with an indigenous package twist, was most important for the main stream Canadian. To be seen as a country with no systemic racism was more important than listening to the minority of the country, because there is room for every ethnicity in Canada, or at least that is the image they wanted to present to the world.
It is also clear that we do not have gender equality in sports. Just look at an average day on the sports networks on TV and tell me how many football games are played by females? How many female athletes can you name, not counting the “Lingerie Football League”? I”ll bet you can name quite a lot of male ones! The salary gap between female and male athletes is enormous. However, we seem to accept all races in sports. Maybe it is because somebody figured out that Caucasians aren’t necessarily the best ones in track and field, football or basketball. Even so, I think we are seeing racism towards minorities and genders through airtime, salaries and the use of mascots.
So what is it we really teach our children when we try to socialize them with sports? That we can make fun of minorities and indigenous people? Use them as mascots and not take their opinions seriously? We might just be reinforcing social prejudice and racism to our kids and to ourselves by watching and playing sports. You could say that it is an ongoing socialization of already existing norms and values, that we just let these things come into our homes by hitting the power button on our TV. Do we really want these kinds of values? Is this the kind of socialization we really want?
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