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Problematic Insect
I understand that in today’s culture people on the Left are trying hard to out woke each other. I also know that colleges are the worst offenders. Despite all of that, when I saw this story I assumed it was some sort of parody.
Emory & Henry College is trying to decide if they should change their team mascot might have a negative impact on inclusion and diversity. Normally when you hear that the teams involved have some sort of Native American based name. But animal names?
It turns out that the racist name is the wasps. Now, I have been stung enough to hate the little creatures, but not because of the colors of their skin. Turn out, the flying demons are not the problem, but it is spelled the same as the acronym WASP. For those of you under 40, WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestants and was a popular phrase decades ago.
It is not clear then if they want to change the name for the sake of WASPs, the way they want to change the Indians name so not to offend Indians, or if they want non-WASPs to feel included. Most of the people I grew up with were either Irish, Italian, or Jewish. I was a WASP and that made me a minority. I was neither proud nor ashamed. So, I really could not believe this story when I saw it.
Then I went to the college’s web site and read it for myself:
Conversations must examine how Emory & Henry’s past has contributed to current and ongoing systemic oppression. For example, discussion should be renewed regarding College’s mascot, the wasp, and the impact of this mascot on inclusion and diversity on our campus.
Here is the real problem. Racism can be an awful thing, but when we redefine it to be the wrong bug on a football helmet then you make it really hard for anyone to be sympathetic.
Published in General
The present cultural situation has been building for decades. Even twenty years ago, the political correctness of the time elicited laughter.
Are we still laughing?
These people have waayyyyyyy too much time on their hands. It’s starting to look like a national competition for admitting to the most woke and egregious name possible. I think they should go for the stupidest.
How is this for a team name?
“Let’s negotiate an outcome to this game that is mutually beneficial!”
😂😂 Nice
It discriminates against those who do not have a diploma.
One might argue that every outbreak of political correctness was followed by a corresponding rebellion against conformity. For example, the Progressive Era gave way to the Roaring 20s, the hippie/kumbaya culture and politics of the 1970s created the impetus for punk, and the stifling political correctness of the 1990s created the impetus for South Park, Family Guy, and Eminem.
Another might counter that just because there were corresponding backlash movements in the past doesn’t guarantee that there will be a corresponding backlash movement this time around.
Yet another might argue that pessimists said the exact same thing when each of those previous outbreaks of political correctness were at their peaks. Every time seems to be different from previous times … until it’s not.
The fact that Joe Rogan has not been cancelled but instead has just signed the biggest deal in podcasting history gives me hope that the forces of free speech have not yet been vanquished.
Symbols are funny things.
Destruction of icons and representations is doubtless older than human history.
And then there is burning in effigy where one makes a representation of the enemy (there may be a better word, or maybe not) to destroy. Tasty red meat, and a threat.
Alinsky spoke of isolating a target and freezing it, and symbols are very useful for that.
Powerful mojo, that.
One of the wisest changes Judaism brought was divorcing G-d from representation, something that made Him harder to ‘kill’.
Normally one changes a sports icon because the people represented might feel denigrated. Which is reasonable, assuming the people actually do mostly feel denigrated (spoiler alert; they mostly don’t).
In this instance people want to change the icon because the people represented might feel the opposite of denigrated.
That is an attack, pure and simple. A stupid and harmless attack to be sure, but an attack nonetheless, and the aggressors will make efforts to improve.
I don’t like encouraging people to be offended or to find offense in ordinary every day things, so I think what the school is doing is a little silly and quite a bit performative. I wonder if it is because students are bothered by this (do people still actually talk about WASPs?) or if the school just wants to be apart of the flagellation drama that’s going around so they can get an extra paragraph in a donor letter. I mean once you hire a diversity-equity inclusion admin then they will find all sorts of ways where you aren’t diverse, equitable, or inclusive… it’s their job… So– I guess I wonder which way the causal arrow is going when it comes to stuff like this.
Exactly. Well said.
Cultural appropriation! Trying to appear Asian . . .
In order to prevent any offense, intentional or accidental, all teams shall be assigned a randomly-generated 10-digit alphanumeric, with any intelligible words generated by accident filtered out.
Wait, that’s no good. It discriminates against cultures that do not use the latin alphabet.
Ok, just randomly-generated 10-digit numerics then. It doesn’t even discriminate against cultures that don’t use arabic numerals or base-10 numbering, since all numbers can be translated into different number systems.
Hmm, except for those that don’t recognize the concept of zero.
No problem. We’ll simply exclude the digit zero from any numeric assignment.
I’m a big fan of Sportsball Team Number 9136475128.
That’s probably more digits than necessary.
We don’t want to have to add more digits at a later date after the popularity of Sportsball really starts to take off.
“Let ’em all go to hell except Cave 76.”
You can get about 45 million combinations out of those letters and digits. Probably plenty.
Have any podcasts been cancelled involuntarily? It’s still a very flexible medium. Perhaps the woke just haven’t gotten around to them.
I find your lack of faith in the growth potential for Sportsball disturbing.
I presume that Apple, Spotify, and other commercial podcast distributors don’t agree to host and/or mirror every podcast that submits an application.
It’s true that nobody could cancel a podcast that was distributed independently via RSS and hosted on the podcaster’s own server.
Au contraire! I suggest White Immature Meddlesome Protesters. The WIMPs!
Now, Calvinball is something else entirely. The growth potential is unlimited.
Perennial Good Sportsmanship Award winners, which is of course the highest honour in Sportsball since the concept of “championships” is forbidden.
Oh I’ve got gray ones, and beige ones, and orange ones, and black ones, and black-and-white ones… But this was the only one whose name sounds like “JAP.”
I’m reminded that in the early (high school) seasons of Sabrina The Teenage Witch (original fun version, not the new “dark” crap) the school’s teams were the Fighting Scallions.
A MINORITY-OWNED convenience store.
Wait. Doesn’t EVERYONE get a diploma these days?
What about teams too poor to afford a ball?
I would assume under the upcoming Sports Participation Equity Act, points will be awarded to teams in real need so they can tie all their games, too, just like everyone else.
“Perennial Good Sportsmanship Award”
Sportsmanship? Sportsmanship?
People, this is the kind of institutionalized hetero-normative patriarchical repression against which we are gathered here to fight. I am fully on board with this Sportsball, this wonderfully woke form of athleticism, but as long as affirmation comes in the form of such predictable celebrations of cis-gendered masculinity, we really aren’t making any progress.
Port Lavaca Texas: Fighting sand crabs
That’s genetic discrimination against those who lack the sports gene.