Week 6

This week the articles talked about race and power in sports in addition to dispelling the common myth of the Asian American model minority. In the first article I read Charles Fruehling Springwood and C. Richard King talk about some of the different forms of racism present in sports, namely the mascots. The debate behind changing names like the Redskins and Indians has raged for years however I feel as though many people do not know why it offends native Americans. To be objectified for a sports mascot minstrel show by cultural appropriation as well as to see colonialist pride in the ways in which these team mascots are represented it makes it easy to see why the objectification of an entire could be a bit offensive. The article continues on to address the lack of black sports mascots despite the high percentage of black athletes, citing the original white perspective during the formation of many team mascots. Black people were thought of as the total opposite of white people, and Native Americans were demonized and made mysterious, therefore making an intimidating mascot.  Finally, the racial demographics in the NBA and other sports leagues that people want to address, don’t. The court or the field is just like the regular world, a place where the color of your skin is not and should not be a measure of anything or a manner in which to categorize someone. That being said, unlike the regular world much of the sports world is based solely on ability and not other factors, making race based decisions obsolete. The model minority article I found interesting for other reasons. The single biggest detriment to the Asian American population is being stereotyped as this model minority, a perfect passive person from a foreign land. This was commonly done by showing Asian Americans as successful and skewing myths about the median income of Asian Americans. Regardless of these skews of data, many Asian Americans had to fight the glass celling, with less than 1% of CEO’s as Asian American and many being forced into second tier jobs. Despite the myth of the model minority, this group certainly hasn’t received model treatment.