Wake me up before you go go

Thursday February 22, 2007 - 5:35PM EDT

Ha that title is funny and has nothing to do with this post. On Wednesday I saw part of a documentary on some of the last first hand accounts of former slaves who were freed after the civil war. It is about 2000 interviews done in the 1930's with people who were slaves before the civil war. The original documents are kept at the library of congress. The one account that has connection to the rest of this post is the one is which a former slave recalled when at 5 years old he was given to his master's son as property. A playmate for his master's 2 year old son. The former slave recounts how the little kid told him while playing one time to hurry up nigger and he replied I ain't no nigger. To which the 2 year old slave owner replied yes you is a nigger my daddy bought you for $200 for me to play with. That episode is important to another issue I've been thinking about and hearing a lot about recently. It involves Native American mascots and the "debate" over their appropriateness.  Though the connection to the slave story I just recounted may be tenuous it made me think.  On ESPN I saw clips of University of Illinois  fans lamenting  the last appearance of their Native American mascot because the NCAA has banned the depiction of Native American icons as mascots. As I watched an unnamed female shed tears over the last performance of their precious mascot I thought about the slave story and it occurred to me that on some level this person is lamenting the loss of her nigger playmate.

I never thought much about the use of Native American images as mascots growing up. My middle school's mascot was a warriors and had a huge Native American head in the middle of the basketball court.  They did later change the mascot to a spartan which was the high school's mascot, but I never gave much thought to the change. As the issue gained some steam and I started to see it more places I still hadn't thought much about it and didn't care much but I would skew towards the view that things like that were offensive although I had no personal feelings. It wasn't until I saw an episode of Real Sports where Bryant Gumbel interviewed a Native American lobbying to get such depictions of Native Americans that I saw the whole picture and understood why that stuff was so offensive. In the interview they talked about what redskin really meant. Most of my life I had taken it to have to do something with the skin color of Native Americans. Although they aren't red that was the primary color generally associated with Native Americans. Damn was I wrong. Redskin is a term used to describe the bloody scalp of a Native American brought back to show proof of the kill for a bounty placed on their lives by early american settlers.  That shit is fucking disgusting. A fucking NFL football team is named after that crap. I was appalled when heard that. People are just so completely ignorant  (just as I was) on this issue it is disgusting. You could never get away with using such derogatory names and images with any other group.

Sometimes I wonder about who European settlers wronged more, the blacks they kept as slaves or the Native they butchered into virtual nonexistence. A sordid history we have indeed. I also think about what the world would have been like today if things like that hadn't happened. I am not of the supremely ignorant view that everything that happens, happens for a reason and it was someone the way things had to be. But I also don't want to say that the changing of certain things in history would have hugely beneficial effects. I just think about it sometimes though and wonder what would have changed.