Wow, Stanford alumni

[pastwatcher]

This is pretty damn shameful.

And right around Columbus Day, too. Because you know how the "discovery of the New World" was just awesome.

Note: I'm actually very "patriotic" about the USA. I think there's a lot of good or at least hopeful things about this country, and I would rather use my places within American culture to influence it than any other--even though I want a world where resources are shared well enough that we don't need nation-borders, or something like that. But, if we celebrate Columbus for his representation of European exploration of the New World, then we celebrate genocide, and we continue to ignore many of its survivors' descendants.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

But in my own personal experience, it was through an initial misrepresentation that I came to learn a great deal of *real* things about real people, came to respect and try to understand them, instead of just accepting the vague ideas which I had imbibed from our culture. It made me less able to ignore real live Indians, to not care about them or not listen to them.

I don't want to be disrespectful or harmful to anyone (except those I disagree with and see as threats to my comfort, safety, and happiness). And I don't in the least consider my experiences representative of anyone else's, or that Indian costumes and mascots and the like are going to suddenly change conditions for Indians everywhere. But it does make me wary of the theory as you've articulated it.

I think unfair treatment of Indians persists less because of the Atlanta Braves than because of institutionalized racist structures and folks generally not caring about issues they know nothing about. Most folks don't care about the negative effects of US drug policy on folks in Latin America, for example, not because they've seen stereotyped depictions of Colombians, but because they just don't know and don't care.

I find the case of the Florida State Seminoles rather interesting (I suppose it's good they decided to be the Seminoles and not the Crackers? But maybe less amusing?) in the way the college has worked with the Seminole tribe to create depictions which the tribe approves of. I wonder if students who attend FSU end up more aware of and sympathetic to Seminole causes and interests as a result, and if this could be a viable strategy for increasing visibility of real Indians and drawing attention to their accomplishments and struggles.

Anyway, I've babbled on for far too long. Good night and take care.

[pastwatcher]

Hey, lots of good points.

And I am definitely on board with the "maybe we will be able to celebrate each other's cultures respectfully" thing. I think it's kinda circular, though: particularly offensive cultural distortion tends to happen when there is already a high level of casual disrespect and/or ignorance of that culture in the mainstream. But, what the effects are, and where the lines are drawn, and what can actually help or not, is definitely something I don't understand well despite some amount of trying to.