You know the old saying, “If it walks like a duck…” which goes along with another adage from my childhood, “I smell a rat in Denmark”. These words came to mind when I first read an article about the young republican candidate, Jason Muscara, who was running for and subsequently won a seat on the Board of Education in Killingly. In spite of the candidate’s spin that he didn’t realize he had joined a nationalistic, white supremacist group when he signed up for The American Guard, red flags were flying high behind his insistence that he is not a racist.
True, he is not the first young man who has been duped into joining a pseudo patriotic organization looking for a place to hang his flag and heart for his country. White supremacist groups are notorious for recruiting young men to join their cause. They lure their prey under the guise of protecting the constitution (meaning second amendment rights and certainly not protecting the rights of NFL players to kneel for justice). According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), The American Guard organized in 2016 with the following goal: “voluntary community protection, activism, and service based around the ideals of American Constitutional Nationalism and the preservation of western culture.” The key word which should raise alarm bells is Nationalism.
On the surface it seems innocuous, but one doesn’t have to dig very deep to recognize that many of American Guard’s supporters tout the rhetoric of notorious hate groups such as the Vinlanders who are hell-bent on a “racial holy war”. Yet Mr. Muscara insists that he had no idea he was in the company of white supremacists, which could be chalked up to the impulsivity and naivety of youth were it not for the fact that he and the republican party in Killingly proceeded to campaign on a racist platform to reclaim the Redmen mascot at Killingly High School.
Never mind the fact that most of the vitriol and outrage against changing the mascot was voiced by alumni who should have moved on from high school twenty years ago, the fact is that Native American mascots are plain and simply racist. The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) first launched their campaign to address stereotypes of Native Peoples in media, popular culture and sports back in 1968. They have lobbied for ending the tradition of using Native American mascots and stereotypical titles in the sports arena for over 50 years. NCAI specifically identifies sports mascots as being racist and stereotypical. “rather than honoring Native peoples, these caricatures and stereotypes are harmful, perpetuate negative stereotypes of America’s first peoples, and contribute to a disregard for the personhood of Native peoples.” (http://www.ncai.org/proudtobe)
As with most things, historical context helps to put the NCAI call to end stereotypical mascots in perspective. Most Native American sports mascots, titles and logos were initiated during the early twentieth century, an era rampant in Jim Crow laws, lynching, anti-immigration and the KKK infiltration into the northeast and rural areas. It is also a period which institutionalized the continuation of physical and cultural genocide of Native Americans. However, the names themselves, of which Redmen is a prime example, along with The Braves, The Indians, Redskins, Tomahawks, Warriors, etc. harken back to the 19th century when Andrew Jackson (Trump’s favorite President, no surprise) had decreed that Native Americans must be exterminated in the name of American progress. During the period of westward migration, treaties were broken, smallpox blankets were delivered to the Sioux Nation as a gift of genocide, and war was a constant as tribal nations attempted to retain their land and their culture. But white Americans didn’t stop at denigrating Native Peoples. We all know the horrors of slavery and the systemic tactics that were employed to keep people of color in their place. Asian immigrants, the Irish and the Italians who arrived in the mid to late 1800’s to build the railroads and the keystone bridges that supported them, were also given a share of epithets and derogatory names which were meant to dehumanize, or as I like to say, “otherize” a group of people who were not white, Anglo-Saxon protestant.
For those of you, who are still not convinced that Native American mascots and sports titles are racist, why not conjure up some of the other common stereotypical names for marginalized groups of people as your sports team. In the tradition of Andrew Jackson and his generation, why not name your team The Yellow Men, or The Irish Potato Heads? Or how about The Blackmen or worse, the N…..s? Surely, you understand how inappropriate that would be, yet when it comes to Native Americans, we have accrued the mythological baggage of the noble savage which was perpetrated by 19th century poets. Somehow we have misconstrued our racist and stereotypical images as being “an honor”, as if anyone wants to be stuck in a box that may as well be marked “artifact”. The fact is the imagery which accompanies Native American mascots denigrates Native Americans as being archaic and anachronistic, something from the past, rather than of the present and future.
The call to “Change the Mascot” is not just about one little town in Connecticut. It is a national movement led by NCAI and gaining momentum across the country. The state of Maine has banned Native American mascots to be used in public schools and many other states have pending legislation to make it illegal to use Native American mascots and stereotypical names on sports teams.
The campaign to keep the Redmen mascot is a sad and desperate attempt by those who are not content with the present to keep Killingly chained to an idyllic past that never existed. When I first moved to Northeast CT in the early 1980’s, Killingly was dubbed Third World Connecticut by some newspaper because it had the highest teenage pregnancy rate. I’m sure no one wants to go back to those good old days. Like many who do not embrace change and the future, they thrive on nostalgic charge for what might have been rather than what truly was. In spite of the myth of an America that was once great and is no longer, we are moving ever steadily to a better future and so be it, Ho.
The students who led the charge to change the mascot at Killingly High School are to be commended for their sensitivity to civil rights issues and their forward thinking. They are, after all, the link to the future, unlike the backward, small-minded and let’s just call it what it is, racist Republican Party which ran a racist campaign and won.