Two Sides to the Same Racial Rhetoric

There’s a lot of noise that’s been made this week about comments made about Barack Obama, by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid over a year ago, and by former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. To my mind, they are just two sides of the same coin.

Reid, it is reported in a book, referred to Obama as a “light-skinned” African-American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” It’s in the same category as Joe Biden’s 2008 description of Obama as “clean and articulate.” Whereas Blagojevich suggests that he is blacker than Obama in a recent interview.

What Reid (and Biden) were saying is is that they were comfortable with Obama because he is more like them than other black people they have known. They are more comfortable with someone like that. I think they were speaking the truth, but the truth is not politically comfortable. And I dare say that much of the United States felt the same way; Obama was not a “scary black man” who sounds like – heaven help us! – Jesse Jackson, so we can vote for him and pat ourselves on the back about just how enlightened and “colorblind” we are.

Blago was questioning the AUTHENTICITY of Obama’s blackness, that there is a checklist of things that makes a “real” black man, from the way he talks to the beliefs he has. Hey, Obama plays basketball and likes jazz; shouldn’t that count for something?

It was the Blago remarks that affected me more personally. There seemed to be this notion, at least when I was growing up, that certain features signified a real blackness. My father used to make a point of my sisters and me speaking “traditional” American English, not some sort of Ebonics. This worked well in surviving growing up in my predominantly white, Slavic neighborhood. It wasn’t as successful in dealing with some of the black kids who would mock my bookish ways and my “white” way of talking. Heck, some of the white kids that hung out with the black kids would suggest that they were “blacker” than I was, because they talked “ghetto”; some of them would put their tanned arms next to mine to check THAT aspect as well.

I mean, I listened to Motown and Atlantic, but I was fans of the Beatles and folk music and classic music. There seemed to be these rules that “authentic” black people could only like certain kinds of of music. That lineage of blues, r&b, soul to hip hop and rap were OK. Classical was not. Neither was rock, which made NO sense to me, since rock and roll evolved from blues and R&B. The artists that performed the outre music like Dionne Warwick (pop), Charley Pride (country) and Jimi Hendrix (rock) weren’t considered “black enough” by some folks, and this really ticked me off.

There was this Red Cross training event at Manlius, NY near Syracuse. I went as my high school’s representative. On the penultimate evening, there was a talent show. I got on stage with a pick-up band, and everyone thought I was going to sing. Instead, I got out a comb and a piece of paper and played a couple minutes of blues riffs. I got a standing ovation; it was one of my favorite moments in my life. The next day, everyone was signing photos and booklets. This one young woman signed my booklet,m on the back, “You’re a nice guy, but you’re no soul brother.” You could have taken a baseball bat and hit me in the solar plexus, then hit me again, and again, and I doubt it would have hurt as much as that one sentence did. I probably looked at that piece of paper periodically for the next couple years, and if it has left my possession, it’s because I lost it, not thrown it away. The ultimate lesson, I suppose, was that I couldn’t worry myself with being “black enough”.

My (condescending, black) godmother died about a decade ago. A year or two before that, I saw her for the first time in many years at the (black) church in which I grew up. She asked me what church I was going to in Albany, and I told her. “That’s a WHITE church, isn’t it? ” I said, “predominately.” There was a point when her disapproval could, and did, really wound me, but not by thast point, fortunately.

There seems to be these periodic calls for “racial dialogue in America”. Yet the Reid comment, which seems to me like a pretty good opportunity, was was largely quashed with an apology and “let’s move on.” I found it particularly interesting to hear conservatives like Lynn Cheney trying to make the most hay about this, and me ending up largely agreeing with George Will. Premise: almost certainly, the color of his skin and the way he speaks made some people more comfortable with Obama. Discuss.

That said, I’ve become increasingly convinced that what’s made Obama “not scary” has also made him possibly less effective as President. I’ve heard those on the left say he should be cracking heads to get the Democrats in line on health care, and those on the right say he should be taking names over the Christmas near-airline disaster. I think it’s not affectation but self-training that has made Obama preturnaturally calm. He HAS the office; maybe it’s time, if he can, to get just a little bit scarier.

ROG

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: The Princess and the Frog

On New Years Day, the daughter and I walk over to the Madison Theatre in Albany to see the new Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog. The movie had engendered a lot of buzz long before it was released because it would be the first black “Disney princess”.

I have to say that the marketing of the “princess” concept is as clever as it is annoying. It is a way to keep the old-line characters (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella) visible and up-to-date, and create a “lineage” that includes Beauty (of…and the Beast), Jasmine from Aladdin and the title characters from Pocohontas and Mulan. I should also note that the popcorn at the Madison is not only inferior to that at the Spectrum, but it costs more.

After at least six trailers, at least half of them sequels (or “squeakquel”, in one case), the movie finally started. In was hoping that as a G-rated movie, she would enjoy it.

The lead role of Tiana, a hardworking waitress who grew up in a working-class family, and is trying to follow her dream of owning her own restaurant in 1920s New Orleans, is played by Anika Noni Rose, who I recall from Dreamgirls (2006). While her childhood pal Charlotte is hot to get to meet the debonair, but lazy Prince Naveen, Tiana is only interested in her dream, until…the kiss from a talking frog.

I liked the film visually. The sequence early on where Tiana dreams of her own place is particularly vivid, and the songs are strong. My favorite may be Almost There; indeed, the brief reprise made me almost cry. I also loved Evangeline, sung by Ray the bug.

The great conversation was whether Disney, who has been rightfully charged with occasional racial stereotyping, could pull off a story without falling into the same trap again. I think it was pretty successful in this regard. The race/culture of the Prince was intentionally vague, and that was a smart, if safe, course.

There were people who noted the voodoo roots of the sinister black character Dr. Facilier – but hey, this IS Louisiana – and I think it’s countered by the mysterious Mama Odie. And I really believe there are those who are just loaded for bear trying to FIND a flaw. One suggested that the songs should have been done by black composers such as the Neville Brothers, rather than the award-winning, hard-working movie musician Randy Newman; such nonsense. Here’s a promo by Ms. Rose, as well as a link to all the songs. I was particularly gratified by this positive review in Racialicious.

Bottom line, I enjoyed it, I’m afraid far more than the daughter, who was frightened some by Facilier and more by his “friends on the other side”. She also was bothered by amphibians in peril, though she now denies it.

Unfortunate also is the film’s “disappointing box office” of $86 million. With ticket sales up generally, why did this film, released November 25, 2009 do about half as well as Alvin 2, released on December 23? Was it marketing? was there resistance by the audience? I don’t know, but5 I hope this movie finds its audience.
ROG

ROG

Finding Freedom in Postwar Europe

Less then a month before my father, Les Green, died in August 2000, he started talking about his childhood. It seems that his grandmother had a boarding house. He advised that there was a father and child there and that they only ate if they had something to put in the pot. He advised that he always had food and never went hungry. He said that when he was in Belgium, serving post-World War II, he was at a woman’s home who reminded him of the days with his grandmother and always ate well there.

After he died, of course we went through his materials. One of the things he held onto was an article from a September 16, 1946 issue of Newsweek, Racial: Maedchen and Negro, about black soldiers in post-WW II Germany. The Newsweek piece was initiated by a much longer piece in the October 1946 Ebony.

The thrust, particularly of the Ebony piece, was that the black soldier felt freer in Berlin, capital of the formerly Nazi nation, than he did in Birmingham or on Broadway.

A July 2009 article in Stars & Stripes confirms this: “In the words of retired Gen. Colin Powell, postwar Germany was ‘a breath of freedom’ for black soldiers, especially those out of the South: ‘[They could] go where they wanted, eat where they wanted, and date, whom they wanted, just like other people.'”

There is a great website, the Civil Rights Struggle, African-American GIs and Germany, which contains some original research on this topic. The NAACP presented its Julius E. Williams Distinguished Community Service Award for 2009 to Maria Höhn (Vassar College) and Martin Klimke (German Historical Institute, Washington, DC / Heidelberg Center for American Studies, University of Heidelberg) for the project.

But, of course, this doesn’t address why my father held onto that article for 54 years. Was he merely interested in the topic? Did he know someone who was pictured? Was HE one of the people in the pictures? There is a guy who remind my sisters and me of my dad. While my father said he was in Belgium, his records show that he was in the European theater from February to November 1946, so perhaps he was in Germany as well. Ms. Höhn, who I have e-mailed, confirms that there were black soldiers in both countries.

I may never know why Leslie H. “Bing” Green held onto that article for so many years.

ROG

ROG

Q is for Questionable Content

In the comments to a blogpost back in September, Andrew Bechard suggested that I write more about race. He had all sorts of good reasons and particular examples. Here’s the thing: I find conversations about race exhausting. It’s not that I think they aren’t important and necessary, or that I don’t engage in the topic occasionally. It’s merely that talking about race often becomes either incendiary (So-and-so is playing “the race card”, whatever that means) or trivialized (the purported “beer summit”) or dismissive (“Race is just a social construct, so if we just stop talking about race, racism will just go away.”)

But Andrew did ask one specific question that I WILL (finally) answer, and without ever using the word in question. “I, for one, am very curious to hear your views on why you won’t use the ‘N word’ when I regularly overhear other black folks using it around Albany.”

OK, here’s the short answer: I don’t like the word, so I don’t use it.

Here’s the slightly longer answer: I think it is hugely a matter of age. People, both black and white, of my generation, born in the 1950s, or earlier, were taught quite clearly that it was not appropriate word for right-minded person to use, certainly to use casually in the manner to which Andrew refers. That’s why when Bill Cosby received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor recently, he requested no profanity or the casual use of the N-word; he didn’t like it. The NAACP held a funeral for the N-word at its annual conference in the summer of 2007. The use of the phrase by Bethlehem Police Chief Louis Corsi – the town of Bethlehem ins in Albany County, NY – got in him into understandable trouble.

For me, part of my antipathy towards the word comes from the circumstances in which I have been called the N-word. It was almost never face-to-face but rather by person or persons in a moving automobile or truck while I was walking or riding my bicycle. this includes more than a few times in Albany, though, to be fair, not in this century, to the best of my recollection.

Now there’s a whole school of thought that if one claims a word, it loses its power. That seems to be the philosophy, not only for some blacks, but women and gays as well. That’s fine for them, but it doesn’t mean that I’ll start using the words. I know people of Polish extraction who use a term considered a slur in talking about themselves, but I’ve never considered it an invitation for me to use it.

I recall quite distinctly that about 15 years ago, I was in my previous church, when one or two black kids were using the N-word in the church hallway. I said, “Don’t use that word here.” At which point, the (white) pastor came on the scene. One of the young men started to argue with me. And I said, in my best stern voice, “Don’t use that word in HERE,” and they relented. The pastor, who is about a decade older than I, was on the same page in this case.

There is a book out there by Professor Randall Kennedy, with the N-word as the title. The subtitle is The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word and that sounds about right. That book and its author, incidentally, were not without controversy.

That said, I would oppose the banning of a book such as Huckleberry Finn merely because it uses the N-word. (I’m really curious what Bill Cosby, who got the Twain award, thinks of this Twain book.) The Irish Repertory Theatre, an Off-Broadway troupe, is putting on an uncensored production of The Emperor Jones, a 1920 one-act play by Eugene O’Neill, with the N-word “flung around with alarming abandon”; I can see the value in doing the production as written.

I’ve also found any number of songs in my record collection that use the word. Thing is, it seemed to be making a point, rather than be a casual comment. Examples include:
Don’t Call Me N*****, Whitety – Sly and the Family
If There’s A hell Below, we’re all gonna Go – Curtis Mayfield
Woman Is the N***** of the World – John Lennon
Living For the City (album version) – Stevie Wonder

When I saw Elvis Costello sing Oliver’s Army last year, I swear he swallowed the N-word in favor of “one more white nah-gah”.

So, Andrew: I don’t use the N-word because…I just don’t.
ROG

ROG

Half Breed

I have developed a premise about some of those folks who instinctively dislike and especially distrust Barack Obama; while some of it may be because he’s black, I think there are just as many who react that way because he is of mixed race. Allow me to explain.

That bayou yahoo who refused to give a marriage license to a mixed race couple – doesn’t he know about Loving vs. Virginia? – was probably seen as an aberrant reactionary; well, maybe.

When people say that someone is “half” something, that “something” is generally something other than white, e.g., “she is half Chinese”, with the white assumed. (Read this Racialicious article to see why the whole fractionalization nomenclature is problematic.)

In fact, the only person I’ve EVER heard described as “half-white” by a white person is Barack Obama. Usually the context is this: “Why does he identify himself as black when he’s half-white?”

Well, that’s the great thing about the United States now, though not always in the past, is that people generally decide how they are identified. What the Census has allowed as of the last decennial count is that people can choose if they consider themselves as of one race or two races or multiple races. It’s THEIR choice. Michelle Obama gets to identify as black even with her mixed heritage. Henry Louis Gates Jr gets to identify as black, even though his DNA test revealed in a PBS documentary that he was as much of European stock as African.

But when Barack Obama identifies as black when he had a white mother: is this seen as some sort of “rejection of his whiteness”? Thus the Glenn Becks of the world can say, apparently without irony, that the President “hates white people” and have some coterie of folks actually believe it.

I’ve not been talking policy disagreements here, so if you think that the enmity is totally based on deficits, health care. et al., that’s fine. I’m just not convinced.
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The title comes from the sometimes-angry Indian/white “half breed” named Quint on Gunsmoke, played by Burt Reynolds in 1962-66, who had difficulty fitting in with either culture.
Or maybe some song by Cher.

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ROG

Let's Talk About Race. Again?

A few things I’ve seen have brought me back to the topic of race, not the least of which is Greg Burgas’ declaration that he is not racist. A bold statement, that. Certainly, I don’t recall anything he’s written – I only “know” him electronically – that would suggest that he is. I wouldn’t be bold enough, though, to say that I am without prejudice. I WOULD say that I work very hard to know what my biases are in order to counteract them.

I think the problem with race and racism generally is that we get caught up in these simplistic myths. Though the Civil War supposedly ended slavery in 1865 – as I noted in the talk I plugged here – there were vestiges of neo-slavery in the US that lasted up until World War II.

Or the notion that South was terribly racist, which it was, but that the North was just the epitome of racial tolerance. I’m thinking of Phil Ochs’ songs such as Here’s to the State of Mississippi or Neil Young’s Alabama or Southern Man. By pointing out the sins of the South, it seems to have given the rest of the country a self-congratulatory free pass. Yet, it is the South, which has had to face its racism more directly, that now has more black mayors, black city council members than the rest of the country.

And the source of that attention to the South was not limited to the US. Mark Evanier posted this episode of Great Britain’s That Was The Week That Was, a satirical review that ran in the early sixties, hosted by David Frost. Check out the piece starting about five-and-a-half minutes in that runs for three minutes or so; a warning – liberal use of blackface and the N-word.

The conclusion that a threshold has been met really never comes when the first person gets there. When Obama was elected, people – lots of people – seem to think that “We HAVE Overcome.” It’s NEVER that simple.

Jackie Robinson is the classic example; when he joined the Dodgers in 1947, did racism disappear from baseball? Of course not. It took a decade before every team had at least one player; if memory serves, the Yankees and the Red Sox were the last, a full decade after Jackie had broken the barrier, and indeed after Jackie had retired.

There are a lot of folks including Howard Stern, in his occasionally salty language, that believe that racism is what’s at the bottom of the rampant hatred for President Obama. Probably, but I’m thinking about how prejudice has tread in the past eight years. After 9/11, there were lots of bigotry and even attacks on Arabs and Muslims, and people who some yahoos THOUGHT were Arabs or Muslims. Some black comedian said, in a widely-understood comment, “Now black people AREN’T the most hated people in America!”

Then we have Obama who is black, but it would be politically incorrect to attack him on that. So they can attack him on being Muslim! They’re still fair game, aren’t they? Throw in that he’s a socialist, communist AND a Nazi – he REALLY needs to hone in on one philosophy and stick with it – and all vestiges that it’s his race that is the problem are washed away. Except that, when you strip away all of the lies, the only truth left is his race.

I’m going to revisit this soon in the context of a book review.

ROG

ROG

Teachable moment QUESTION

I’m just not getting this notion that not talking about race will somehow fix the race issue, the position, it seems of George Will and Morgan Freeman. Just this month, I came across this Salon piece about a vendor sending the letter writer a racist cartoon. In Racialicious, The protagonist of Justine Larbalestier’s novel Liar is a young black woman with short, natural hair. So why is there a white girl with long, straight hair on the cover? A touching piece in Antiracist Parent notes it’s never too late for racial unity in your family, about a mixed race couple, now married 40 years, who were rejected by his (white) family until fairly recently. Great moments in political race-baiting, which I will contend SHOULD include Bill Clinton.

Yet these “teachable moments” such as the Skip Gates arrest/President Obama’s comment/the “beer summit” don’t seem to teach much. Lots of arguing across each other. Most of these “moments” from Don Imus’ comments to Michael Richards’, seem to generate a lot of fury, but then we move to the next thing. There seems to be little common ground forged.

Or is there? I think most conservatives and most black people seem to be on the same page with regards to Henry Louis Gates, though they get there different ways.
Michele Malkin and her ilk wondered why he wasn’t taught at one point to respecting the police, while black folk thought, “Is that man CRAZY? You don’t shoot off your mouth to a cop; you can end up dead.” in any case, Gates’ Arrest Was Nothing Compared to Evan Howard’s.

(Musical interlude: Pete Seeger – What Did You Learn In School?, with Words and Music by Tom Paxton
I learned that policemen are my friends.
I learned that justice never ends.
I learned that murderers die for their crimes.
Even if we make a mistake sometimes.)

So should we talk about race? HOW should we talk about race? I’m convinced there’s more to be said but unclear about the methodology.

ROG

ROG

The "Obama Birthday Surprise"

It’s Barack Obama’s 48th birthday. While I do have some real policy issues with him (I fear a quagmire in Afghanistan, among other issues), those can wait. After all, it IS his natal day, wherever he was born.

OK, I jest, but that is my basic point. I think that too many people, including me, have gotten caught up with the various attacks on the President, from whether he’s a natural-born citizen of the United States to whether he’s a racist (Jeremiah Wright –I heard invoked by Glenn Beck just recently – to Skip Gates) to whether he’s a socialist (single payer health care). Or merely the Antichrist who wants to euthanize old people. What we’ve been missing, what I’ve been missing, with all those trees, is the forest.

I’ve become convinced that the proponents of these theories don’t need to PROVE the smears against Obama as unAmerican (by birth or by values). It’s merely necessarily to repeat them over and over. And over and over and over again.

Take the birthers, please. Jon Stewart pretty much eviscerated their points a couple weeks ago. The very next day, I get an e-mail that goes on and on and on about how the group (I won’t bother identifying them) will lead a campaign to “FAX All 50 State Attorneys General To Investigate Obama’s Birthday FRAUD”
According to published reports,[WHAT published reports?] Barack Obama’s legal team has been paid over one million dollars, so far, to STOP anyone from seeing ANY of his actual identification documents, or many other documents:
* Actual long-form birth certificate (NOT an easily-forged electronic copy of a short-form document that is not even officially accepted in Hawaii) except by legal authorities in Hawaii…
* Columbia University senior thesis, “Soviet Nuclear Disarmament” – writing about the USSR; maybe he’s also a Communist? …
* Obama’s client list from during his time in private practice with the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Gallard Hey, yeah, and while you’re at it, reveal why the clients were there. But wait, wouldn’t that violate lawyer-client privilege?
* Baptism records
* Obama/Dunham marriage license
* Obama/Dunham divorce documents
* Soetoro/Dunham marriage license
* Soetero/Dunham Adoption records
But would even THAT be sufficient? Ask David Hernandez.
It’s a longer list, but it’s brilliant in its innuendo.

The point is that it does not matter what Obama does; he will be criticized. And not on legitimate grounds, such as the deficit, but over specious stuff.

Take the mundane example of the so-called “beer summit”. Obama was criticized for his choice of beer – Bud Light. But think about it: don’t you believe he’d be criticized for ANY pick he made? If he’d picked a German beer, he’d be criticized for not picking a domestic brew. (Is Anheuser-Busch still considered “domestic” now that InBev owns it?) Even a selection of Sam Adams would have been picked as blue state elitist, I’m willing to bet. There was never going to be a satisfactory choice.

So for the President’s birthday, we should vow to vow not to get confounded by the – dare I say it? – vast right-wing conspiracy – designed to make sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing. Let us hold this President accountable for the substantive issues, but ignore the politics of distraction. And distraction it is, though it has the capacity of being believed. The repetition gives some the belief that “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” except that it’s the same cabal blowing smoke.

ROG

July Ramblin'

When the swine flu – I’m sorry, the H1N1 virus – was first announced in the spring, I was feeling bit peevish about the pundits who seemed to think that the government – actually world governments – were making too much of the disease. Frankly, i think it was due to lack of understanding of the nomenclature. We don’t know what a Level 6 (pandemic, declared weeks ago) feels like. We understand gradations of temperature, the difference between a Category 1 and category 3 hurricane or a 3.6 earthquake vs. a 6.6. Anyway here’s John Berry’s 2009 WHITE PAPER ON NOVEL H1N1 (PDF). Barry wrote the book The Great Influenza about the 1918 flu epidemic: “Three of the preceding four pandemics, 1889, 1918, and 1957, show clear evidence of some fairly intense but sporadic initial local outbreaks scattered around the world.

“The novel H1N1 virus seems thus far to be following the pattern of those three pandemics, and it seems highly likely that it will return in full flower. If the virus is fully adapted to and efficient at infecting humans, this would occur soon, possibly during the influenza season in the southern hemisphere or possibly a few months later in the northern hemisphere. The 1918 and 1957 viruses both exploded in September and October in the northern hemisphere, even though this is not the influenza season.

“If the virus needs further adaptation to become fully efficient in infecting humans, that could be delayed, quite possibly a year or two later. It seems very unlikely that this virus will peter out.”
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Got this e-mail: Black Male Teachers – Do you know any Black males who are seniors in high school who want to go to college out of state for “FREE” ? Several Black Colleges are looking for future black male teachers and will send them to universities/colleges for 4 years FREE .

The ‘Call Me MISTER’ program is an effort to address the critical shortage of African American male teachers particularly among South Carolina ‘s lowest performing public schools . Program participants are selected from among under-served, socio-economically disadvantaged and educationally at-risk communities…

Visit here for more details and the online application or call (800) 640-2657.

But if you GO to that page, you’ll ALSO read “Please read this memo regarding an email hoax that provides misinformation about our program.”
It has been brought to our attention that an erroneous e-mail, rife with inaccuracies and misinformation about the Call Me MISTER Program, is making its way around the country. Said e-mail makes such false claims as “South Carolina HBCUs offer FREE TUITION” and our program is for “African American MALES ONLY”, neither of which is true. While we do offer tuition assistance and book support, plus a small stipend to defray other associated costs of attending college, we DO NOT now offer, nor have we ever offered, a full scholarship.
Myths need to be debunked.
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Lean times in L.A. County leave no money for the dead. This is a story about more people opting for cremation. As someone heavily influence by Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death, I applaud the trend, even if it’s being done out of economic necessity.
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On a lighter note, from Yahoo! Food: 5 Summer Food Mysteries Solved. I KNEW the ice cream one to be true.
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My wife and her class saw the movie The Yes Men last weekend. “Shocking and funny,” she described it. as it turned out there was an article in the local paper about the movie’s follow-up, now playing on HBO and perhaps coming to a theater near you.
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Paul McCartney returns to the Ed Sullivan Theater as he appears on Letterman, 45 years after his first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Paul at Citi Field, NYC.
***Amusing and even educational. Church Advertising
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This video was made in the Antwerp, Belgium Central (Train) Station on the 23rd of March 2009. With no warning to the passengers passing through the station, at 08:00 am a recording of Julie Andrews singing ‘Do, Re, Mi’ began to play on the public address system.” As the bemused passengers watch in amazement, some 200 dancers begin to appear from the crowd and station entrances.
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A final goodbye for S. Palin, YouTube fodder from last year, but what they hey.

ROG

ROG

I is for Indian

As every American fifth-grader knew when I was growing up, the aboriginal people of the Americas were called Indians because the Europeans who headed west to get east thought that they had reached Asia, probably the East Indies (Indonesia, et al), but it is THIS place that’s involved in the current discussion:

There developed real confusion when saying Indian whether one meant someone from the Asian subcontinent or from the Americas.

Subsequently, there was a movement by some Americans to use the term Native American instead of American Indian as more “sensitive” to the first Americans. Yet there were and are many entities that still use the term Indian, from the American Indian Movement to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, part of the US Department of the Interior to the new Museum of the American Indian, pictured above, which incidentally is staging an exhibition of Native American comic art.

So what do the people involved feel? Seems from this article that there is really no consensus:

A 1995 Census Bureau Survey of preferences for racial and ethnic terminology (there is no more recent survey) indicated that 49% of Native people preferred being called American Indian, 37% preferred Native American, 3.6% preferred “some other term,” and 5% had no preference. As The American Heritage Guide to English Usage points out, “the issue has never been particularly divisive between Indians and non-Indians.

Further:
In the end, the term you choose to use (as an Indian or non-Indian) is your own personal choice…The recommended method is to refer to a person by their tribe, if that information is known…[W]henever possible an Indian would prefer to be called a Cherokee or a Lakota or whichever tribe they belong to.

The 2010 Census is coming up and the Bureau will be using “American Indian or Alaska Native” as the designation for native peoples, just as it did in 2000. At least one of the reasons may lie in this true story I heard from someone who works at the Bureau. Census forms are tested periodically. In some neighborhoods with large immigrant populations, Census was finding an anomaly; a large number of people were checked as Native American, often inconsistently within a family structure. It soon became evident that the new arrivals were checking their country of origin for themselves, but their children who were born here they designated as Native American. The children WERE native to America.

Still, I am still quite uncomfortable referring to the Major League Baseball team in Cleveland or the National Football League team in suburban Washington, DC by their respective nicknames. It just feels wrong to me. At least the NFL team doesn’t have that dopey grinning logo, Chief Wahoo, which reminds me very much of the caricatures of black people in old minstrel shows.

For those of you not into sports or from the United States, the topic of sports nicknames “honoring” Indians at the high school, college or professional level has been an ongoing debate, as you can see, for instance, in this article.

ROG

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