Case Study Native American Mascots

The Different Treatment Towards Native American Mascot Case

As sports teams, making mascots is important. It can be something that will show their supporters how strong and unbeatable they are. Therefore, they need some imageries that are perfectly matched with their goal and vision. There are Native American imageries that are often used as mascots to show those needs. However, this act emerges many protests from many circles. National Collegiate Athletic Association mentions that it has been a debate in America at least 30 years about the usage of Native Americans imagery as school or sports teams’ logos, nicknames, or mascots (Native American Mascots, 2008). There are over 3,000 sport teams from high school, college, and even professional
It makes some people are influenced and some of them even don’t realize that they do the racism by supporting the Native American mascots and nicknames. However, Locklear’s research doesn’t explain clearly the fact that Native Americans are treated differently from other ethnic groups. It means that when other ethnics are treated offensively by the use of racist statement or word, as has been mentioned by Baca, people react to oppose that act. It is true that there is a campaign against the use of Native American mascots. Even so, until now, the use of Native American as mascots is still continuing. It can be known by seeing a professional American football team named ‘Washington Redskins’ still using Native American mascot and nickname. In the Baca’s research, Baca does mention that Native Americans are treated differently, but Baca also doesn’t mention and explain what are the reasons behind the different treatment, even though some people realize that the use of Native American mascots is an offensive
Horwitz’s “America Studies: Approaches and Concepts”, is over because as we know that American Studies now faces many problems, for example Native American as Mascots, that does not focus on American myth-and-symbol. The fourth phase in American Studies shows that we should see something from different perspectives, like has been mentioned in George Lipsitz’s Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies and John Carlos Rowe’s Post-Nationalism, Globalism, and the New American Studies, because if we only see something in one perspective, it is not American Studies anymore. Richard P. Horwitz’s “America Studies: Approaches and Concepts” mentions that American Studies method itself is interdisciplinary, that is why, it is impossible to approach one only discipline in American Studies.
By the emergence of Globalization as mentioned in John Carlos Rowe’s Post-Nationalism, Globalism, and the New American Studies and Benard Mergen’s Can American Studies be Globalized? makes us realize how American Studies now does not stand in one region that is America. Benard Mergen even states that American Studies is used by other countries such