The Dark Side Of Sports Symbols - racism and sexism of names, symbols, gestures, and mascots

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 2001 by D. Stanley Eitzen, Maxine Baca Zinn

"Colleges and universities, for the most part, are making major efforts to diversify their student bodies, faculties, and administrations by race, ethnicity, and sex. This laudable goal is clearly at odds with the existence of racist and sexist names and practices of their athletic teams."

THE TEAMS that played in the 1995 World Series were the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians. Inside Atlanta Fulton County Stadium and Jacobs Field, the Braves' fans did the "tomahawk chop" and enthusiastically shouted "Indian" chants. Similarly, the fans of the Indians united behind their symbol, Chief Wahoo, waved fake tomahawks, and wore "war paint" and other pseudo-Native American symbols. Outside these stadiums, Native American activists carded signs in protest of the inappropriate use of their symbols by Anglos. (In less politically correct times, there was no such uproar when these same teams met in the 1948 World Series.)

A group's symbols serve two fundamental purposes--they bind together the individual members and separate one group from another. Each of the thousands of street gangs in the U.S., for example, has a group identity that is displayed in its names, code words, gestures, distinctive clothing, and colors. The symbols of these gangs promote solidarity and set them apart from rivals.

Using symbols to achieve solidarity and community is common in American schools. Students, former students, faculty members, and others who identify with the institution adopt nicknames for its athletic teams, display the school colors, wave the school banner, wear special clothing and jewelry, and engage in ritual chants and songs.

A school's nickname is much more than a tag or a label. It conveys, symbolically, the characteristics and attributes that define the institution. In an important way, the symbols represent the institution's self-concept. Schools may have names that signify their ethnic heritage (e.g., the Bethany College Swedes), state history (University of Oklahoma Sooners), religion (Oklahoma Baptist College Prophets), or founder (Whittier College Poets). Most, though, utilize symbols of aggression and ferocity for their athletic teams--birds such as hawks, animals such as bulldogs, human categories such as pirates, and even the otherworldly such as devils.

Although school names and other symbols evoke strong emotions of solidarity among followers, there is also a potential dark side to their use. The names, mascots, logos, and flags chosen may be derogatory to some group. The symbols may dismiss, differentiate, demean, and trivialize marginalized groups such as African-Americans, Native Americans, and women. Thus, they serve to maintain the dominant status of powerful groups and subordinate those categorized as "others." That may not have been the intent of those who decided on the names and mascots for a particular school, but their use diminishes these "others," retaining the racial and gender inequities found in the larger society. School symbols as used in sports, then, have power not only to maintain in-group solidarity, but to separate the in-group from the out-group and perpetuate the hierarchy between them.

Symbols of the Confederacy

At Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Fla., young African-American athletes wear the Confederate Army's colors on their uniforms and call themselves the Rebels. The school they play for is named after the slave-trading Confederate general who became the original grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Within the neo-Confederate culture found in parts of the South, certain symbols such as the Rebel battle flag and the singing of "Dixie" are zealously promoted. These symbols have two distinct meanings--one that promotes the South's heritage and another that symbolizes slavery, racial separation, and hate.

In 1948, the so-called Dixiecrats, rebelling against a strong civil rights plank in the Democratic platform, walked out of the party's convention. That year, the University of Mississippi adopted the Rebel flag, designated "Dixie" as the school's right song, and introduced a mascot named Colonel Reb, a caricature of an Old South plantation owner. In 1962, James Meredith, despite the strong opposition of Gov. Ross Barnett and other white leaders in the state, became the first black student at the school. There were demonstrations at that time in support of segregation. Infused in these demonstrations was the showing of the Rebel flag and the singing of "Dixie" as symbols of defiance by the supporters of segregation.

Over the ensuing years, the use of these symbols at the University of Mississippi has caused considerable debate. On the one hand, they represented the state's heritage and as such were a source of pride, inspiration, and unity among its citizens. The opposing position was that these symbols represented a history of oppression against African-Americans, noting that the Rebel flag was also a prominent symbol of the Ku Klux Klan. Opponents argued further that, since almost one-third of Mississippians are African-Americans, the flagship university of that state should not use symbols that recall the degradation and demeaning of their ancestors. Is it proper, they ask, to use the key symbol of the Confederacy and African-American enslavement as a rallying symbol for the University of Mississippi's sports teams--teams composed of whites and blacks?