Recently there has been a lot of talk about professional
sports teams changing their names or mascots because they are offensive. The stories gaining the most attention in the
United States are about teams whose names and mascots are Native American. As usual, there is a disconnect between the
opinions of fans of those teams and the opinions of the general population.
During Sunday night’s NFL broadcast, Bob Costas opined that
the term “redskin” is offensive and it is time for Washington’s football team
to pick a new name. Indeed, the term
redskin has always been used as a pejorative, certainly never as a term of
endearment. Despite the intentions of
‘skins fans, who are not intending to insult Native American peoples, the word
itself carries the stigma.
There is a similar brouhaha about the Cleveland Indians logo
Chief Wahoo. With its red face, large,
hooked nose, and exaggerated grin, it is a relic of the past. It’s an unflattering caricature, one which
you might have seen on an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, an episode which Cartoon
Network won’t show nowadays because of its overt racism.
I read an article in an online Cleveland publication about
this topic. True to form for the
internet, the post-article comments were a cesspool of ignorance. Comments ranged from incoherent defenses of
Chief Wahoo, to personal attacks on the articles author, to the issue being
some sort of Liberal, PC conspiracy connected to Obamacare. (Yes, someone in the comments section
actually described the effort as a liberal plot connected to Obamacare. Sometimes I wonder what it’s like living in
the delusional world some people have created for themselves).
All of the vitriol generated by Cleveland fans who supported
the symbol leads me to believe that they are in the wrong. If you have facts supporting you or a good
argument to make, there’s no need to resort to personal attacks or conspiracy
theories. The fact that so many from Cleveland
so aggressively support this bigoted symbol, makes me think that they deserve
the sports mystery to which they have been subjected, including being the only
team to actually lose a championship to a team from Atlanta: the Braves, who
themselves gave up the ridiculous caricature of screaming Indian Chief Noc-A-Homa in 1986.
The terms Indians and Braves themselves may not be of issue,
just the inconsiderate symbols the teams have used, but the responses have been
mixed when considering teams named after individual Native American
tribes. While the Seminoles have
endorsed Florida State’s use of their name, the North Dakota Fighting Sioux
have had to change theirs.
I’m curious to see if this change in attitude will cause
Notre Dame to rethink their name. Is
Fighting Irish a symbol of pride for Irish-Americans or is it a reminder of
what others think about their bellicose behavior? Those drunken Irish are always getting into
fights, right?
Racism in sports exists beyond the borders of the United
States. The world of international
soccer is rife with racism. It’s not
just in international tournaments, however, where you see cases of blatant, intentional
racism. This crops up within national leagues
as well.
A few years ago a friend turned me on to a Premier League
soccer team called Tottenham Hotspur F.C., a north London club. He’s not a Spurs fan, being a Chelsea man,
but we can forgive him for that.
Tottenham were making a run in the Champions League and starting to make
some noise. My friend offered me a little
history about the club to get me interested.
It wasn’t the on-field history that caught my interest as much as the
off-field stories.
Tottenham was considered to have a large Jewish
following. Whether or not that was ever
true doesn’t seem to matter as the impression stuck. Fans of rival clubs, mostly other London-area
teams such as Arsenal, Chelsea, and West Ham, began calling Tottenham
supporters Yids as an insult. There are
a myriad of anti-Semitic chants used by fans of rival teams, including those
where fans make a hissing sound to simulate the sound of concentration camp gas
chambers. The Dutch team Ajax Amsterdam,
also considered a Jewish club, is regularly subjected to chants like, “Hamas! Hamas!
Joden aan het gas,” (Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas) followed by hissing.
As a response to the anti-Semitic insults, Tottenham fans
took the term Yid for themselves, calling the athletes and fellow supporters
Yids or Yiddos and calling their supporters club the Yid Army. I found this intriguing and appealing. Others do not.
In the United States the word Yid isn’t a bad word. I hear comedians using it all the time. I hear Jews using it regularly. It seems harmless to me based on experience. The word kike is peculiar to the United
States as a pejorative toward Jews. However,
in Europe, Yid is the ethnic slur carrying a history of hate.
There has been a push by the English Football Association,
as well as other groups, such as the Society of Black Lawyers, to stop
Tottenham fans from using the word in a bid to stamp out racism. Defiantly, Spurs fans at White Hart lane have
continued using the term, as well as adding a new chant to their repertoire, “We’re
Tottenham Hotspur, we’ll sing what we want.”
Should people continue to use the word Yid, or stop because
it is insulting? I thought I’d compare
its use to a subject more familiar to Americans, use of the N-word.
Some African-Americans have taken to using this word, trying
to nullify its use as a term of hate.
Others disagree, not seeing it as empowerment, but instead seeing it as
encouragement for racists to continue to use the word. Personally, I’m not so convinced that co-opting
a word is going to diffuse its power.
Has its use nullified the word’s power? Ask yourself this question: can anyone who is
not black say the word? The answer is an
emphatic “no.” Even white rappers, who
seem to closely identify with Africa-American culture, are not allowed to use
it. If one does, it ignites a shit
storm. So, I can’t say that use of the
term by African-Americans has made anything better. Yet some blacks continue to use this
term. Should we, therefore, reserve the
use of the word Yid to only Jewish Tottenham supporters? I’m not sure about that either.
Not all African-American people support the use of the
n-word. They, too, believe that the word
is an insult and invites racists to continue to use it. Prominent African-Americans including Maya
Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, Cornel West, and Bill Cosby have spoken against the use
of the word, calling it dangerous and saying it promotes self-hatred. Personally, when I hear it, I still hear it
as an insult. I think using it to refer
to yourself or others of your race shows a lack of respect. In a famous Chris Rock HBO special, Bring the
Pain, he uses the term to differentiate among people within his own race. “I love black people, but I hate n****s.” Even within the African-American community,
among those who will say the word, it does not carry a positive
connotation. The way I see it, frankly,
if you don’t respect yourself, why should I or anyone else respect you?
So, if I oppose the use of the N-word, can I support use of
the Y-word, even by Jews? How can I resolve
this cognitive dissonance? Either
continued use of the word would have to render it impotent, which experience
has shown me it does not, or I would have to believe that the Y-word just isn’t
an insult. If Yid is truly offensive to
European Jews, in the same manner that the N-word is offensive to people of
African descent, I have to stop using it myself.
I am unsure if I’ll be able to continue as a member of the
Yid Army. Regardless, I will still
continue to support Tottenham F.C.
COYS!
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