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North Quincy High's mascot to continue to be Armenian-American dentist, only no longer in redface
By adamg on Mon, 08/03/2020 - 8:46pm
WCVB reports North Quincy High School is keeping its mascot Yakoo, only now, instead of looking like an angry Native American about to stomp somebody with a tomahawk, he'll be portrayed as an angry American colonist about to stomp somebody with, um, a bill of rights or something.
Although the city and school realized the former portrayal of its mascot was, oh, completely racist, they had to keep Yakoo himself, given that it's a representation of Allan Yacubian, a local dentist who is a long-time North Quincy High booster.
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Comments
In order to keep moving
In order to keep moving forward we must never forget the past. That is the reason to move forward.
So glad it’s going away.
For those who don’t know, this mascot has been the subject of law suits, was deemed offensive by the state, and has been condemned by Native people for decades.
That explains it...
I saw the new logo, and was wondering why they kept that nose once they were doing a redesign anyway... Had no idea it was based on a booster, but that explains it.
Dr. Yacubian
All the trash that spews out of my mouth goes by many teeth that he worked on many years ago.
A great guy, and yes, the NQHS Yakoo Mascot is a bit outdated. Glad to see the change.
Now considering the current occupant of the White House, can we do something about the Quincy HS symbol? Just kidding. All will be well in January.
All will be well in January?
Don't hold your breath, Joe is well Joe. He's not generating much buzz with his "No Malarkey" campaign.
There going to be low turnout among independents.
Sports mascots are creepy. I was at Fenway when they
first rolled out Wally with an eerie voice-over backstory about how he'd been secretly haunting the recesses of the park for years, like some Muppet-y Phantom of the Opera. You know: for the kids!
If you're going to go weird, go full-on, transgressively weird, like Gritty.
I freaking love Gritty
I freaking love Gritty
Where did I see him before?
Maybe...
Funny you should bring up Mel Brooks in this context
Blazing Saddles is, arguably, one of the funniest movies of the last fifty years.
If it was made and released in the current climate, everyone associated with it would be "cancelled" before the first ten minutes of the movie. Wouldn't even get to "But we don't want the Irish!".
This, my woke friends, is not progress.
So what do people think about something like this?
My high school teams (not in MA) are the Warriors and have a mascot similar to this (always blue and white.) I always felt like this was recognizing and celebrating the Native American culture. No?
Not really
Not really, no. That may have been the intention, but at best, this sort of thing is like when your Aunt Mabel buys you clothing that she thinks would look great on you but that you think makes you look like hot garbage. In her eyes, she's doing something nice for you, and some Aunt Mabels will really dig in on this one, and will insist that you wear it, and will get angry and hurt if you don't. So at best, it's uncomfortable all around. It's someone "honoring" you in a way that doesn't make you feel honored.
Woke whites believe Native Americans not smart enough to decide
Even the far-left Washington Post admitted their poll showed that Native Americans share overwhelming pride for the Redskins. Undaunted, the white liberal elites decided that Native Americans don't know what's good for them and took the name away regardless. Much like the collapsing MSM and the destroyed Democrat-run cities, the end is nigh for professional and eventually college/HS sports. Progressive progress.
Did you just copy and paste this from the NFL thread?
I guess that’s what we’re doing now.
‘Redskin’ is a slur. From the same “far-left” Washington Post article you lean on:
Why are you so invested in defending a word that your own article calls a slur?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-survey-explores-how-native-americ...
Well...
The fact that a word is described as a slur in a dictionary is a product of the committee writing the dictionary. That's not necessarily indicative of the community as a whole or even how most ostensible targets of the slur view the word. Thus the repeated results of polling which indicate most Native Americans (and FWIW many still self-identify as American Indians) were proud of the Redskins team name rather than offended.
The reason why we have had team names which reference Native Americans is largely because those names connoted bravery, strength, power, and other positive qualities. It's why we have team names like Spartans, Vikings, or even Patriots. It's why we don't have team names like Carthaginians or Field Mice (apart from some exceptions like Ducks or Banana Slugs).
I can see an argument about cultural appropriation or misuse of tribal symbols but IMO the stuff about racism is a bunch of smoke with no fire.
On the subject of cultural appropriation... there was a bunch of controversy years back about the MFA allowing visitors to try on kimono as part of an exhibit about kimono. A bunch of folks (mostly not Japanese) were angry about cultural appropriation. So, I visited Tokyo four years ago -- an amazing city, visit if you ever have a chance! A group of local volunteers organizes free weekly walking tours in English as a medium of cultural exchange. I highly recommend that just as a way to meet ordinary Japanese/Tokyoites and learn about each other's culture -- we spent a lot of time talking about Pokémon, too! At the end of the tour, the tour guides were very eager to have participants... try on kimono! I politely declined but in my view the guides felt it was a valuable way to share their culture, rather than a show of disrespect.
Please stop.
Please stop.
Additionally...
‘Redskin’ is defined as a slur because it is a slur.
Wow
I am so impressed by your rhetorical skills!
Nah
Nah. It isn't. Those names connote a cartoonish caricature that reduces an entire continent of people into a few tired cultural stereotypes.
The argument you're making here is like saying that the Aunt Jemima image was used largely because it connotes maternal love, superior householding skills and culinary competence.
The second a right-wing putz uses the word "woke",
you know you can pretty much tune out the rest as gibbering propaganda.
It also takes about two seconds of Googling to show how wrong-headed is this notion that natives are cool with the racial slur "redskins": https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/washington-redskins-name-controvers...
Politically Correct > Woke > Cancelled
It’s a shame that Fish is out of touch. “Woke” is so 2018; the 2020 way to be anti-PC is to lament that NQ’s mascot as been “cancelled” and whine about the oppression of “cancel culture”.
It’s the same gripe against civility for the last 30 years rebranded.
One man's "cultural
One man's "cultural appropriation" is another man's "gatekeeping".
What's so offensive about people without Native American genetic ancestry, adopting Native American symbols? How is it so different from someone from Armenia joining the melting-pot and dressing up like a Minuteman? As long as you're not doing something with the intent of insulting someone else, then it's confusing to claim that it insults someone else.
Instead we live in a bizarro world where intent carries no value. It's fine to troll people with things you know they don't like (e.g. protesting and counterprotesting), as long as you feel righteous about it.
That's not a civil way to go about things.
So Different
Have British-Americans said that they find it offensive or demeaning when Armenians dress up as Minutemen?
Have British-Americans asked Armenians not to dress up as Minutemen?
Do Armenians have a long and well-documented history of using insulting racist stereotypes against British-Americans?
Do Armenians hold a position of power in the USA relative to British-Americans?
Did Armenians massacre millions of British-Americans, strip the remainder of their homelands and move them to reservations via military force?
That's how it's "so different".
You're welcome.
"gatekeeping"? really?
Sorry, gamergater, nice attempt to introduce irrelevant jargon, but this ain't gatekeeping.
Dan Snyder is a liberal now?
Weird, I wouldn't have pegged a guy who gave $1 million to Donald Trump's inauguration and $112k to Jeb Bush's campaign as particularly liberal. Just how far has your Overton window shifted, Fish?
Here's an academic study
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/02/04/native-mascots-survey/
Are you serious?
Berkeley? And do you really think this was a true scientific, unbiased survey? SMDH
Bullshit
You want to cite NBC Sports and the Washington Post? Provide links. Put up or shut up, you shameless antediluvian throwback troll.
Here's a simple rule
Would it be offensive if your fans randomly showed up to games or events dressed as your mascot? If so, you should go with something else.
(in this case, absolutely - see any number of articles about wearing Indian headdresses by non-Natives)
offensive to whom? everyone
offensive to whom? everyone finds different levels of offensiveness in different things. it gets most silly when people say things like "I'm okay with it, but other people may find it offensive." As if anyone has a really accurate offensiveness barometer.
offensive to the people it depicts
Thats the measure.
Here's a good rule of thumb
Here's a good rule of thumb: weigh the actual benefit to you of dressing up and parading around in a caricatured Native American costume, or mock-massacring a Native American mascot, against the potential harm or offense that this may cause the people being caricatured. Chances are that even with teeth gritted you won't be able to manufacture a benefit to you that is so substantial and meaningful that it weighs more than a gnat's ass.
Or, another way to look at it is like drinking and driving. What the hell, you'll probably be fine, you probably won't hit anyone, and you don't need some third party nanny state protecting the people you might hit...right?
There really is no need to navel-gaze here. When your purported need to do something is flimsy at best, even potential harm is reason enough to abstain.
comparing the dangers of
comparing the dangers of drunk driving to the "potential harm" of a mascot is ridiculous.
If that were the comparison being made...
If that were the comparison being made, you might have a tiny fragment of a point, but it isn't, and you don't. The point being made is that you are arrogantly and selfishly asserting your right to create harm for others in order for some shallow gratification for yourself. The degree of harm is irrelevant; the point under discussion is your spurious "right" to commit such harm in any degree. Put bluntly, you are asserting the upholding of your right to be an asshole as more important than any damage that your asshole behavior does.
Can you point me to
anyone who's actually offended by, say, the Bruins name or logo? Or the Red Sox? Or the Patriots? Or even the Celtics?
Meanwhile, multiple Native American groups have been on record for decades about not using their cultural traditions as costumes or mascots. If there's a barometer, it's pretty clear which end of it we're on here.
Well, the Native Americans themselves aren't fans generally
Beyond that, the feathered headdress is (I think) mostly a Plains tribe thing so if your school was anywhere else, it would like calling your team the Europeans and then having your mascot be a Bavarian guy in lederhosen, etc... It's lazy and stereotyping - 'oh, this is what all Indians look like, right?'
Anyways, teams should only be named after things in the natural world, like the Seattle Kraken or the Springfield Isotopes.
I'm cool with keeping the
I'm cool with keeping the names if you can prove to me people in that group are ok with it or celebrate it. Somehow the Utes and Utah and the Seminoles of Florida figured it out. Who am I to tell the Tribes they are wrong?
I was a Spartan in high school, maybe that's bad? I try to Google it and nothing comes up and it was in Lynn... The local Greek population seemed to really embrace it. The Greek students I went to school with wanted to get in the mascot outfit as soon as they saw it. I don't see that same enthusiasm with the Native Tribes.
When I was a kid I remember Notre Dame and the Fighting Irish. The figure is off-putting to me but I remember my Irish friends, all their families seemed to love it. It's one of the only college logos I knew about because I saw it so much. Seeing Irish people flaunting the logo... I don't recall the last time I saw someone from one of the Tribes put on a Saugus Sachems letterman jacket for fun.
Sure
Any specific tribe has its own agency and right to determine what's ok in regards to their name. As you noted, there are rare cases where that happened. 'Indians', 'Redskins', etc... fails that.
It's generally super dumb that any grown adult would care what the status of the name of their town school sports team would be after they've graduated.
Sorry, no
If Native American culture was really being recognized and celebrated, then there'd be awareness that the headdress signifies a cultural and sometimes spiritual status that is earned through deeds and not a logo every 14 year old who signed up for JV soccer gets to run around on the field sweating on.
Given the additional problem of the fact that America basically wiped Native Americans off the map, then it's fully inappropriate to claim that a high school mascot is in "honor" of them.
No.
Native American identity is not a dress-up costume or a Disney character.
Why not just say screw it all
Why not just say screw it all and make the mascot the actual guy the picture is based around? Embrace the dentist, put dental tools in his hands and give him that headband they wear. That may just very well scare the other teams!
When will the Celtics dump the leprechaun?
It's clearly racist and demeaning. Same with Notre Dame; the leprechaun with a fighting stance is very racist and promotes an ignorant stereotype.
And the Native American on the MA state flag with the sword above his head. Gotta go.
Super Mario Bros is demeaning to Italians.
The list is endless.