My grandson is playing football for the first time. He is in the older age group of the kid’s football league. Now the mascot in our town is an Indian, therefore he plays for the “little Indians.” You can see how pregnant this is with prejudice already. Now that we are enlightened, we know that such terms are pejorative. Maybe he should be playing for the “Little Original Peoples,” or the “Little Native Americans” or the “Little First Americans.”
But it gets worse. There are 3 levels divided by age group. The youngest and smallest are “The Squggies” (I would love to have been on the focus group that came up with that idea). The next group is called Pee-Wees, which I am sure was in place long before Pee Wee Herman (aka Paul Ruebens) gave the term pee-wee a negative spin. My grandson’s group is called the midgets. I am not kidding. They are the midgets. Picture the Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz, or the Oompa Loompah’s in Willy Wonka. How can an organization in modern America get away with such blatant hate language?
So, tomorrow he will play his 1st official football game as a member of the Horizontally Challenged Indigenous American Peoples. And I will be there cheering him on; “Go Indigenous Americans, beat those Leopards.”
No comments:
Post a Comment