TSO links to an opinion piece by George Will on sport team nicknames. Will comments that it is a misguided sense of political correctness that is pushing this issue of sport teams like the Illini, Seminoles, Braves, etc. are insults to Native-American culture.
I’m not so sure. I think maybe something much more insidious is occurring. It just might be a new-and-improved postmodern form of prejudice. Playing on people’s over-sensitized sense of political correctness, a few people are trying again to marginalize, minimize, or even drive-out and eliminate any reference to Native Americans from the general landscape of American culture and conscience. Just like the old Indian schools here in Oklahoma were guilty of preventing children from speaking their native languages, some of these “politically correct” people just might be trying to erase any reference to Native-American culture outside of history books and the reservations.
I don’t know. Something to think about.
I suspect that political correctness like this will eventually transform the Great American Stew Pot into the metaphor from our history books, the Great American Melting Pot. America was never a melting pot. A melting pot destroys the distinctiveness of the ingredients and everything becomes the same—the whole becomes equal to or less than the sum of its parts. A stew is made from distinct and diverse ingredients that enrich the overall flavor—the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. I’d rather have stew than melted goo.