There is a growing demand that we should stop giving sports teams racially based names. Some frequently quoted examples are the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Blackhawks.
Interestingly, several native chiefs in the U.S. see no harm in the practice. But let’s face this issue head-on and see where it leads.
I presume the Vancouver Canucks are gone. Everyone knows “Canucks” is a term of derision used to demean Canadians by our Yankee friends. And while we’re at it, the house that Babe Ruth built — Yankee Stadium — is also problematic. Many southerners in the U.S. still consider “Yankee” a swear word.
Indeed, for that matter, can we live with “Babe”? Clearly offensive to women everywhere.
The Edmonton Eskimos would have to be renamed. Many of the indigenous peoples in Canada’s North take “Eskimo” as an insult.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders? Doesn’t that call to mind Teddy Roosevelt’s thuggish Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill and massacring an overmatched Spanish army with Gatling guns?
Let’s pass quickly over the Calgary Axemen and the McGill Redmen.
And what to say of the St. Eustache Patriots (imperialist jingoism), the Degagne Buccaneers (poor role modelling), the Minot Top Guns (militaristic chest-beating) the Durham Fury (ditto) and dozens more with names drawn from our violent past.
Trust me, I could go on. For this is merely one facet of a broader struggle — the emergence of identity politics.
The idea is that any group possessing a distinct ethnic culture has sole right to the traditions developed within it — names, icons, music, dress, cuisine, etc. Others who intrude on those traditions are guilty of cultural misappropriation.
Two examples. A yoga teacher at the University of Ottawa offered free classes to students with disabilities. For this act of kindness she was shamed on campus because yoga is an Indian tradition and, being non-Indian, she had no right to practise it. The course was eventually renamed “Mindful Stretching.”
At Bowdoin College in the U.S., some students held a Mexican-themed party. After they gave out miniature sombreros, the whole weight of the university administration came thundering down on their heads.
An investigation tracked down the “culprits,” who were kicked out of their dorm and placed on “social probation.” (To read a courageous piece on the intellectual bankruptcy of this entire movement, Google LionelShriverGuardian.com.)
A clarification is needed. No reasonable person would deny that human history is filled with racial stereotyping, put-downs, debasements and worse.
There isn’t an ethnic group or culture that hasn’t been insulted and ridiculed, nor is there one that hasn’t done the same to others. What matters here is intentionality — not what was said, but what was meant. The examples I’ve given contain no intended slur whatsoever.
What we’re witnessing is an attempt to disassemble the tapestry of human history that a thousand cultures wove together, and award each ethnic group the exclusive ownership of some small corner.
But you don’t preserve a tradition by building a fence around it and treating it like a piece of property. And you don’t preserve the free movement of thoughts and ideas by granting numberless claimant groups policing rights over our planet’s many cultures.
Police states take numerous forms. Some limit actions. Some prohibit beliefs. Others impose stifling ideologies that tolerate no opposition.
The version we’re dealing with here is more insidious, because it wraps itself in a cloak of victimhood. And yes, there have been victims.
But the dream of free speech emerged from centuries of repression, by religious, state and mercenary forces. It was realized at a cost that some have now forgotten.
The suppression of this dream is no more tolerable now than it ever was, special pleading notwithstanding.
