The Logistics and Ethics Pertaining to an Indian Mascot.
Mascots have always played a pivotal role in rallying school spirit and immortalizing sport traditions. Unfortunately, there are some mascots that are immortalizing the wrong traditions and the releasing unhealthy school spirit. As for the mascot pertaining to this paper, a sense of racism seems painfully evident. The mascot lowers Indians to mindless brutes; it also depicts an inaccurate image of what Indians actually dressed like. Nonetheless, some of the townsfolk are still for keeping the mascot; their reasons are often loosely strung around with words like "tradition" and "freedom". The opposing side use arguments based on racism and historical inaccuracy. I, for one, like to think Im a half-decent, honest, hardworking human being. So over a sensitive subject like this I tend to lean towards changing the mascot. Aside from the obvious ethical reasons surrounding the issue, there are logical explanations for changing mascots as well. In sum, keeping the mascot is both morally and logically flawed.
I'll use the word "ethical" loosely and on my own terms. Ethical can have many connotations and can vary from culture to culture. Some may think that having slaves is ethical while others may think that spanking a child for saying a naughty word is unethical. Looking at the first case the slave is exploited and abused against its will for no cause or reasoning detracting from the fact that he or she was born with the wrong skin tone. In the second case a child is punished for saying a naughty word. No one can judge how severe a child should be punished; however as long as there is no long-term injury and the intent was solely for educating I consider the punishment ethical. So when I say the mascot is unethical I mean that it is attacking another person or group of people without just cause. In addition, the mascot may have lasting detrimental effects on future generations.