Last year the University of Illinois finally capitulated to pressure from liberal activists and state Democratic politicians—the traditional officers of the Political Correctness police force—to sack the school mascot Chief Illiniwek, whose existence and traditional dance during halftime of UI football games was deemed by critics to be insulting to Native Americans. The NCAA even went so far as to label the Chief to be one of the nation’s "hostile and abusive racial/ethnic national origin mascots."
This makes no sense and is indeed counter-intuitive and basely illogical. A simple question and its answer exposes this as truth: Why does a team or school adopt a mascot of any kind? To identify themselves with the region they are from and/or to inspire their members and supporters. No one adopts a nickname and mascot for themselves that is insulting or demeaning of another group or entity, for to identify themselves by an insulting and demeaning nickname is to insult and demean themselves. As UI alumnus Robert Novak points out, "colleges all over America adopted Indian nicknames, symbols, and mascots for their football teams--not to mock the country's defeated native population but to inspire warrior-like fierceness on the gridiron."
Beyond just this simple exercise in flat illogic is the hypocrisy and shallowness within the movement to remove Indian nicknames and mascots from schools and sports teams. Why is the nickname "Indians", "Braves", or "Redskins" culturally and ethnically insulting while a nickname such as the "Fighting Irish", complete with a pugnacious and diminutive leprechaun as its mascot, not insulting to Irish-Americans? What’s the difference?
There isn’t one.
Political Correctness and its tyrannical police force have run amok in this country, attempting to stifle, as Mr. Novak eloquently writes, the human spirit with its "dead hand."
Those P.C. police have indeed won and the Chief is dead, but the political correctness which killed him ought to share his fate.
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