Trump makes a stand for a beloved mascot.
Trump makes a stand for a beloved mascot.
P resident Donald Trump has made some odd choices in adversaries lately (see, for instance, the country of Canada), but if he’s going to wage war against New York State’s senior deputy commissioner for education policy, what right-thinking person can object?
In a Truth Social post, the president forcefully defended a Long Island school district’s traditional “Chiefs” mascot from a crackdown by the educational authorities of New York State.
James Baldwin, the aforementioned senior deputy commissioner, enunciated the education department’s board of regents policy in a letter to school districts two years ago. He warned that unless districts dropped their Native American–themed mascots, they’d suffer the “removal of school officers and the withholding of state aid.”
It is almost certainly the case that we reached “peak woke” some time ago, but that doesn’t mean that nonsense like this isn’t continuing to advance apace.
“In addition to their legal obligations,” Baldwin declared, “boards of education that continue to utilize Native American mascots must reflect upon the message their choices convey to students, parents, and their communities.”
Mandatory reflection is so enlightened.
Massapequa, a town named after an Indian tribe, is particularly attached to its “Chiefs” mascot and has been fighting, futilely, in the courts to escape the state edict. It got the president’s attention with an appeal for help.
Let’s stipulate that such community decisions should ideally be left to school districts without pressure from the state, or counterpressure from the federal government. On the merits, though, Massapequa and President Trump are correct.
The “Chiefs” mascot is a beloved tradition in the town that doesn’t harm anyone. It’s not as though no one would be exposed to Native American mascots if it weren’t for the depredations of this Long Island hamlet.
The NFL team that has played in the last seven AFC championship games is named the Chiefs.
The MLB team that has won the National League East six out of the last eight seasons is called the Braves.
And, much less impressively, the NHL team that has missed the playoffs seven out of the last eight seasons is known as the Blackhawks.
Yes, there will always be changing tastes. It wasn’t a great loss when in 1986 the Braves retired their mascot Chief Noc-a-Homa, who had a tipi in the bleachers and would celebrate home runs by dancing and setting off smoke bombs. (Although true Braves fans will always believe that the temporary removal of the tipi in the 1982 season led to a terrible losing streak before it was restored.)
But to chase out of our collective life Native American mascots, which are always associated with strength, nobility, and fighting spirit (or no one would want them as mascots), is willfully destructive and dumb.
New York State school districts are having to dump such names as the “warriors” and “thunderbirds.”
The state has made an exception for districts that can get one of the state’s Native American tribes to endorse their mascots, although it’s not clear how this makes sense. The mascots are either harmful or not. If they aren’t, it shouldn’t make a difference whether a (presumably self-loathing) tribal nation signs off or not.
The president of the Seneca Nation, Rickey Armstrong Sr., insists, “The historic decimation of Native people should not be celebrated in any fashion or used as a community rallying cry, especially in the realm of education.”
Naming a school the Chiefs or Warriors obviously doesn’t celebrate the victimization of Native Americans — rather, the opposite. Armstrong seems to believe these names are the equivalent of calling a school, say, the Conquistadores.
New York State has been at this for a while. Baldwin noted that in 2001 former Commissioner Richard Mills released a memo “concluding that the use of Native American symbols or depictions as mascots can become a barrier to building a safe and nurturing school community and improving academic achievement for all students.”
Of all the problems that New York State schools might have, mascots seem like they should be pretty far down the list.
Massapequa likes to say, “Once a Chief, always a Chief.” In a more rational world, it would remain axiomatic.