<p>Growing up, my elementary sports team was the Indians. It was the name for my mother and my grandfather as well. When I came home one time in my cheerleading uniform I proudly told my grandfather that I was an Indian!!! He smiled, and explain all the ways that I am not an Indian. He showed me how black his hair was, the high cheekbones, his dark skin and even laughed about how he drinks too much. He said HE was an Indian and that he was not a mascot. I never felt quite right about the school mascot after that. That was 1980. He lived through a lifetime of discrimination, was called Injun, passed over for jobs on the railroad, etc. Did he go to the school board and raise a fuss? It was offensive then to him and it is offensive to me now. (I am adopted so I don’t share his heritage. I am actually Irish)
I have no problem with the Seminoles since the tribe has fully sanctioned the name and they have a history of suppoting the team. I hate the Tomahawk chop as well. As for Fighting Irish, I see it as coming from embracing their original student body and not reacting to the taunts of a rival team. It is akin to how the Purdue Boilermakers got their nickname. They didn’t choose it, but were called that by rival school Wabash College, along with names like ‘grangers’, ‘pumpkin-shuckers’, ‘railsplitters’, ‘cornfield sailors’, ‘blacksmiths’ . Boilermakers stuck. According to some reports, Northwestern is the school that dubbed them the Fighting Irish, and it was meant as an insult. So if it is embraced by “their own” that is another thing.</p>