Mascots make white people feel better

An article by Rebecca Nagle states:

"The mascot debate is framed as whether or not Native Americans are offended. But the real reason these mascots are still around is that they make white people feel good about being white."

"School leaders are now asking Trump to issue an Executive Order protecting all Native mascots in schools."

"What is even more interesting is how the mascots made white people feel about themselves. European Americans exposed to racist mascots in research studies reported a boost in self-esteem. Seeing racist mascots made white people feel better about themselves."

"Support for mascots–and other contested symbols like Columbus–strongly correlates with how people feel about being American. People who are proud of being American and for whom nationalism is a central part of their identity are more likely to support Columbus Day and mascots like the Chiefs and the R—skins. These folks tend to hold the belief that America is the best democracy in the world. It is hard to square that pride with the reality of what our government did to Native Americans. The land on which our country is built already belonged to millions of people and hundreds of Indigenous nations."

 "To take that land, our government put tribal citizens in concentration camps, systematically used starvation as a tool of war, stole generations of Indigenous children, and engaged in campaigns of mass slaughter. How can we be the greatest democracy in history if we also committed genocide? One way to square our government’s crimes with a belief in its greatness is to dehumanize the victims. A cartoon of a brown head with a pointed nose and a few feathers doesn’t deserve human rights. That cartoon isn’t human."

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE