Native American Mascot Research Paper

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Using Native Americans as mascots has been a recently contradictory issue. School mascots can be offensive in cases, however, there is a right and wrong way to use a group of people as a mascot. Some ask themselves how they can use a Native American mascot without offending Native Americans? The answer is simple; let Native Americans decide which mascots are offensive, and which ones aren’t.
The right way to use a group as a mascot is to get approval from that group. In the example of a school in Arizona where the school mascot is the Redskin, the student body is mostly from the Navajo nation. The people here “...reject claims that [Redskins] is a slur…”. Because the students and staff at the school are Native Americans, they have the authority and experience to determine …show more content…
A white person would not be accurately able to determine whether a mascot like the Redskins is racist or not because they will not experience the same racism that Native Americans do. A junior at the school, Mckenzie Lamemen, who is also the student government president, said “‘It’s not a racist slur if it originates from a Native American tribe. . . . It’s always used in the context of sports.’” What Lamemen is saying here is that the Redskins name is not racist in the case of her school, because it is Native Americans who came up with the team name.
Those who support the mascot use may claim that using a Native American as a mascot is a form of flattery, however many times when people attempt to honor Native American culture, it becomes insulting. The author of the article, “Sticks and Stones and Sports Team Names” expresses his witnessing
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