Bye Bye Redman and Good Grief: Bird’s Eye View Blog (Opinion)

Redmen name and logo gone…good…Why?

1. Indigenous people face stereotypes all the time in Canadian society – the last place they need this kind of thing is right in the education system – tucked neatly between denying their historical viewpoints and denying their identity.

2. The people of the school said this was being ‘done in haste’ (28 days they said). In fact, this issue has been talked about in Indigenous circles for some 28 years.

3. The vote was 8-2 to change it (that’s clearly unanimous). The people have spoken.

4. I have to deal with one student’s opposition, and break down its problems in the new face of racism in 2014:

“This is going to create division, I think that’s obvious. I think we all know that and I think that the sooner that we are all equal and are all the same thing then there won’t be any division any more.”

All equal. All the same thing. Those are very interesting words.

Equality in this situation would be the remove the logo and have no culture being a mascot or dehumanized for a sports team. The same thing would be to allow Indigenous cultures to thrive and exist in the land of their people, and be free in Canada as any other race is. It starts with imagery for a young teen.

“If we keep caring about racism, racism will keep existing”

This is a huge misnomer and a logical mistake. Racism does not exist because we ‘care’ about it existing. Racism exists because we have stereotypes in our society about Indigenous people that become cemented fact to some. This turns into bias, then to bigotry, then to outright discrimination. This infiltrates everything, including sports imagery.

Not caring about that is the real problem that allows racism to thrive. We have seen more racism in the last year and half (since INM made a splash) but we have also seen, at every turn, racism and ignorance being combated since Indigenous people will not have their identity played with anymore.

Wanna stop racism, you start talking about it.

For more on this story see News talk 650;  http://www.newstalk650.com/story/redmen-name-and-logo-history-bedford-road-collegiate/273316

– Jay Bird, Bird’s Eye View Blog