An account of the specific ill of Native American mascots—that is, the particular racism of using Native Americans as mascots, as distinct from other racist portrayals of Native Americans—requires a fuller account of the function of mascots as such than has previously been offered. By analyzing the history of mascots in the United States, this article argues that mascots function as symbols that draw into an artificial unity 1) a variety of teams existing over a period of time and thereby (...) 2) a community of individuals who are thus able to use that team as their own symbolic locus of unification.This unification of teams and their concomitant communities is accomplished by appeal to a symbol that facilitates a particular fantasy of collective identity. The usage of Native American mascots is racist not only because it involves stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans, but (more specifically) because it treats Native persons simply as a means to symbolic unification—and not, importantly, as members of the community they thus serve. In other words, in these cases mascots work as unifying signifiers precisely by being the purely instrumental facilitator of a group's collective fantasy of itself. (shrink)

The two-part thesis of this work is that Native mascots are morally wrong but that they do not warrant proscription. They are wrong because they propagate false or misleading beliefs about others and contribute to disrespectful misrelationships. This moral wrong lacks the weight to warrant proscription because of the countervailing weight of free-expression and the fact that Native mascots are mere offensive nuisances rather than profound offenses. Because Native mascots are morally wrong they ought to be challenged and resisted, but (...) without recourse to legislature. (shrink)

This article presents a critique of two arguments made by S.P. Morris in his recent piece ‘The Trouble with Mascots’. The first argument is that the wrong of mascots is rooted in the falsity of the stereotyping generalizations that they create and perpetuate. The second is that when the group provides the name to itself, it is, in light of that fact, no less morally objectionable. These two arguments are related, for the second would be correct if falsity were in (...) fact the issue. As I argue, however, if we take a different view of the problem that generalizations present, the moral relevance of who does the naming becomes clear. (shrink)