Exploitation of ethnic labelling and ideas, in particular, “Native American”
In the writings of Wright, Churchill, and Mankiller suggest that in the United States, the Native American is an invisible minority. These authors, each in their own fashion, explains the reason why they feel that the Native American is such. Churchill approaches the problem from the standpoint of how Native American-ness is exploited and ridiculed in modern sports teams, while Ronald Wright discusses the invasion of the new continent and how ridiculous it is that one may discover a land which is inhabited. Finally, Wilma Mankiller explains her experience in more modern persecution of the Native American.
The practice which is ongoing in modern day professional sports is one that would be utterly unacceptable when directed at any other minority. Churchill’s observations state that in modern day sports, there exist professional which employ names that are found derogatory to Native Americans. Churchill makes a very strong and controversial point when he shows us how ridiculous an equivalent name for any other race would seem, and provides examples which I do not even wish to list in this essay. Additionally, Churchill adds the case of Julius Streicher to the fold, where under the Nuremberg Trials, a certain Julius Streicher was sentenced to death and executed for the reason of propagating racism and hatred for another race. This is significant because one of the American justices presiding over the Nuremberg Trials himself admitted that this event would be murder if the same precedent is not aboded throughout all remaining history. Churchill recognizes that an execution of, say, those who create the logos for certain racist-named American teams is simply not a feasible answer to the problem, but he humbly requests an amendment to the names of these teams. The media’s influence in telling us there is nothing wrong with all of these things, through continued subtle messages such as that there are for example only a very small amount of Native Americans live in America, when there are as much as 250,000 Native Americans in residence on the United States, and that words like “Tomahawk Chop” are not derogatory when they are the very embodiment of racism toward Native Americans, just like for example, the stereotype that blacks like watermelons is for African Americans.
Ronald Wright speaks of the invasion of the Americas. This is the very first point at which the deterioration of significance (in society’s eyes of course, not mine) of the Native American. Upon the arrival of the Europeans to the Americas, they were immediately impressed by their superiority in their own eyes over the Native Americans. The culture they saw was primitive, and they believed the Native Americans to be weak, by the evidence (most of which is very weak, the rest weaker) of how their technology is more advanced, of how the Native Americans are more inherently weaker and more worthless due to their weak immune systems, which were ravaged by European diseases which they were unfamiliar with, of their lack of writing, etc, etc, all of which were rather arbitrary proofs. The logic which they used to examine Native Americans was flawed in essence by the Europeans’ self-inflated view of their own virtues.
Mankiller, a Native American chief of her peoples, has the experiences which are to this day thrust upon Native Americans by the descendants of those who brought misery to their natural state of happiness. She, today, sees how until this date the United States has little regard for the Native American peoples, so much as to the extent as to not appear a blatantly oppressive tyrant, which is what society in general, suspectingly or not, remains to be. The weapons of discrimination and dehumanization (invisibility-causing, basically) have changed, but in essence, they are faithful to their brutally backward origin.
About the Author
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