Joe Bob's America: No Indians around here

NEW YORK, May 17 (UPI) -- My millionaire fantasy: I want to write a will leaving all my money to build a free high school, Joe Bob High, with only two provisions. The athletic teams would have to be called the Joe Bob Redskin Rebels, and the logo would be a fierce Indian brave waving a Confederate battle flag.

I could make a legitimate historical argument for it, you know. There were several Oklahoma tribes who fought for the Confederacy during the initial Southern march up through Arkansas and Missouri. But mostly I would do it just to make 'em squirm.

People who protest against battle flags and Indian team names -- besides wasting millions of hours in courtroom and legislative time -- are just plain arrogant. They take some narrow view of American history, sports history or local history, then use some hapless athletic program or Confederate veteran's group to protest against a phantom offense. They're looking for a fight where none exists.

Does anybody really think that the founder of the Cleveland Indians was going, "Har har har! Those Native Americans are so worthless! I'm gonna put the name 'Indian' on my team just to belittle them."

In fact, if anybody cares, the opposite is true. The early sponsors of sports franchises at all levels chose the Indian names because many of them were old enough to actually remember various revered tribes that were famous for their bravery. Sports team names were chosen for manhood, hardiness, valor, ability in battle -- all those dime-novel qualities supposedly shared by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. So wouldn't a protest against the team name at least include some debate about what the original founder intended?

Apparently not. The California legislature has taken up a bill that would make it illegal to name a high school athletic team after any Indian word, including Braves, Chiefs, Indians, Redskins, Warriors and Apaches. But here's the essence of hypocrisy in the bill: Schools located on Indian reservations would be exempt from the law.

Normally I would say this is a free speech issue, but since I think defenses of the First Amendment should be reserved for things that matter, I would rather classify it as a George Orwell issue. It's the manipulation of symbolism, much like the Soviet Union once practiced, in order to make everyone salute the same icon in the same way. To the high school that says, "We're proud of our Indian name," the state says, "That's an unacceptable interpretation of history."

How very Stalinesque of us.

But here's the part I really don't understand. Since when has any high school team name been intended as derisive? These team names are so revered that the parents and students wear them on their clothing, sticker them to their cars, write songs about them, and generally exaggerate their psychological potency. Nobody thinks his team mascot is a joke, not even the Fighting Ducks of Oregon. So where is the offense in the first place? It would make just as much sense to say the Texas Rangers, oldest law enforcement agency in Texas, should be offended by a baseball team in Arlington using its name, or Italians should be offended by the University of Southern California Trojans. (Or would that be Greeks? Or people from Asia Minor? Come to think of it, that's a weird mascot.)

To try to prove just what their political point is, a group of Native American students at the University of Northern Colorado named their intramural basketball team "The Fighting Whities." The gesture was intended as a protest against a local high school's use of an Indian-mascot caricature on its team logo. (The high school team is called the Reds.) The Fighting Whities wear jerseys that say "Every thang's going to be all white."

"The message is, let's do something that will let people see the other side of what it's like to be a mascot," said Solomon Little Owl, director of Native American Student Services at UNC.

"It's not meant to be vicious," said Ray White, a Mohawk member of the team. "It puts people in our shoes, and then we can say, 'Now you know how it is, and now you can make a judgment.'"

Okay, I've seen how it is. I've made a judgment. I think it's funny, and I think it's absolutely OK. It reminds me of that Louisiana white-boy caricature, the Ragin' Cajuns. How do they expect me to react? With shock and outrage that my European heritage is being held up to ridicule and diminished by this outrageously racist organization? It's a goldang sports team.

The Washington Redskins have been under attack for a several years now, and recently the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments voted 11-2 for a resolution saying the name of the team was "demeaning and dehumanizing" and calling on the team to change it. As far as I know, this is one of the few times in history that a legislative body has singled out an individual private business for censure.

That is how crazed these people have become.

State flags are the other big form of "I'm gonna grind you down, no matter how much of the public's money it wastes" protest. Two years ago, when New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani was running for the Senate, he spent a couple of days in Little Rock to embarrass Hillary Clinton by raising money there. It's the tradition, when the mayor is out of town, for the state or national flag where he's visiting to be displayed on New York City Hall.

In this case it was the Arkansas flag, of course, which was promptly criticized by the New York City Council for being "a symbol of racism." They even talked about pulling it down.

I'm offended. I wrote my fifth-grade social studies essay on the Arkansas flag. The Arkansas flag is a diamond with stars on four sides of the diamond. The diamond represents Arkansas as the only American state with an operating diamond mine. (We have to claim whatever we can get.)

The four stars represent the various governments that have claimed Arkansas -- sort of like "Six Flags Over Texas" -- and those governments are Spain, France, the United States, and, yes, the Confederacy.

So we have one little measly star on the flag -- about 5 percent of the total surface of the banner -- representing a chapter in the state's history.

Yes, someone can speak up and say, "But that star offends me. That star represents something that should never be celebrated." Just as someone can say, "We shouldn't praise the despoiling conquistadors from Spain, or the Indian-hating French who explored the Arkansas River." But the flag doesn't say that we love these people. It just says, "This is our heritage."

The old-fashioned American way of settling a dispute like this is to put the whole thing to a vote. That's what the state of Mississippi did when their version of the Stars-and-Bars came under attack. And the people voted to keep the flag.

In many of these Indian-named high schools, you've had political-correctness referendums, with the student bodies almost always voting to keep the team name.

That's why I say the issue here is not heritage, or racism, or the First Amendment. It's just plain 'ole arrogance. "That flag offends me! That team name hurts my feelings!"

It's someone whose own private quirky views have somehow been foisted on a majority, for no reason except to have one's way.

It's become a cause that can create the illusion of bringing the establishment to its knees. And in California, where people get legislatively self-righteous over everything from smoking in restaurants to ensuring life terms in prison for third-rate burglars, a minority mob can actually win something like this.

But why the exemption for high schools located on Indian reservations? In that case, I assume, an Indian mascot is considered a point of pride -- just as all the other Indian mascots are treated with pride. The difference, on the Indian reservation, is that it's pure-dee racial pride. Which one would seem to be more narrow-minded?

(Joe Bob Briggs writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at [email protected] or through his Web site at joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.)