I can’t believe you guys are really missing the point this hard. You’re not supposed to be insulted. The fact that you’re not insulted IS your white privilege. That’s what it’s highlighting. You’re tripping over the point here.
I strongly disagree, I grew up in a 100% white community in a 99% white country. In that situation there is no white privilege, because everybody is white.
And I see zero problem with that shirt. I don’t see why anybody would wear it, usually that kind of shirt would be worn, because you agree with or even is a fan of what is depicted.
I wouldn’t mind wearing a BLM shirt for instance, because no matter what you skin color is, it is a true statement.
That’s neither exclusive nor specifically for being white, lots of people of other skin colors don’t have to worry about that, and aren’t impacted by it. I have never heard anyone talk about yellow or white privilege for Japanese.
I’m not denying white privilege exists, but the fact that I don’t mind a T-shirt saying Caucasian, is not a symptom of that IMO.
If I was a fan of Indian culture, and had a shirt with the name of a tribe, please explain why that would be offensive to an Indian?
Maybe then I can understand the point some people here are trying to make.
Edit:
I guess this could be related to some sports using Indian imagery, that is completely out of context, and could be perceived as cultural appropriation I guess. They are playing under a “false” banner. But we don’t have that or anything similar in Europe AFAIK.
It’s exclusively white in America. I’m sure there are other countries with other systems. I don’t live in those so I don’t know their history and systems.
If you’re not talking about America, in a thread about a topic about Native Americans and their symbolism, then I admit I have no idea what you’re going on about.
I strongly disagree, I grew up in a 100% white community in a 99% white country. In that situation there is no white privilege, because everybody is white.
Would you hold to the position that the white folks of your country didn’t benefit from colonialism & exploitation of people elsewhere in the world, resulting in a significant positive effect on generational wealth? Were your social institutions, such as universities and churches, built without any input from colonial exploitation, or doing business with those who did exploit other races for profit?
Privilege isn’t just about your local police treating you better than a brown person. It’s also about your skin color opening doors to education, power, and wealth.
Would you hold to the position that the white folks of your country didn’t benefit from colonialism & exploitation of people elsewhere in the world
Pretty much yes, our only possession of what could be called foreign land is Greenland, and that’s a huge economic deficit.
But even if we still have some privileges from colonial powers, that does not change the fact of not being particularly privileged in the society I live in when growing up.
Meaning it hasn’t formed my character on how I regard other people.
You could say I was privileged in not being under privileged or discriminated against. that in itself is of course of huge value. But not really a privilege compared to everyone I grew up with.
Ah yes, the good old days. 😋
Many of them even asked us to come back a couple of years ago. They have had some problems ruling themselves.
In jest I’m sure, or was it?
Privilege is generally fairly invisible to the people who have it. Like privilege of unrestricted travel. European nations with a high number of white people enjoy the privilege of their passports and visas allowing them to essentially walk into a high number of other countries. Let’s say… Denmark who has a whopping 159 countries that allow them free transit through boarders. If your country is predominantly not white and has broken ties with European colonization or has a non-European government structure then you might have free transit through approximately one quarter of the number of free countries and a number of additional stipulations are in place where you might theoretically have “free transit” but have to write ahead about your reasons for transit and can be denied access for things like visiting the deathbeds of dying family members.
Privilege isn’t just something that affects you from the standpoint of how well treated you are in comparison to the people immediately around you, it’s formative to your mindset because there are layers of restrictions of freedoms, choices and behaviours you don’t even have to know about because they do not apply to you. If you did not grow up with an expectation of having to make do with visibly less then privilege absolutely has shaped you and your worldview.
Not feeling privileged is part of privilege itself. Ask yourself if you feel like your experience has made you feel like a true citizen of your country? Can you wear clothes that allow you to feel modest by the standard of your religion without hastle? Were you as a child ever subjected to additional classes to reform your home culture? Privilege is as simple as feeling like you are home and nobody questions you being there.
Privilege is generally fairly invisible to the people who have it.
I agree and understand that.
Denmark who has a whopping 159 countries that allow them free transit
I’m sure for instance Singapore and Japan enjoy mostly similar benefits.
It has nothing to do with being white. Ergo it is not a white privilege. The same goes for for instance Americans, the number of countries they can visit is not tied to their skin color. Despite that, there is no doubt all white Americans enjoy some degree of white privilege, that does not mean the same goes for all other countries.
Wow, that’s one hell of a cherry pick that left 90% of what I said on the table. One might also note that I mentioned “colonized by a European nation” and picking the two Asian nations that still host UK and US military bases and are maintaining democratic systems directly implemented by those occupying powers which continue as primary economic bedfellows isn’t exactly disproving my point.
If you’re going to be lazy then why bother replying?
Right? Like, you should be honored that their mascot would be a guy who looks exactly like you. He does, he looks exactly like you. It’s celebrating how your people were brave warriors who fought with honor despite being uncultured savages, and you should be proud to have your entire culture condensed into one easily imitated mascot. Also, you should be thrilled how they chant “Defense” to the tune of Amazing Grace and Ave Maria, you should love that because those are your songs. How could you possibly be insulted by such an honor?
I wouldn’t be offended at a team called Caucasians, filled entirely with Indian players. But I don’t live in the same universe that Indian people do.
But maybe if white people made up 2% of the population, after being systematically eliminated by Indians to make use of our land, maybe if white people were relegated to the poorest, least productive areas of the country and told to be thankful for it, and maybe if the word Caucasian was kind of a rude way to refer to my skin color, I could see myself being offended at the idea.
This one’s on me, because I was trying to make a point and be sarcastic at the same time.
While I agree with you, I’ll quibble that context isn’t actually important here. The point of the shirt, and the point I was trying to make, was that reducing an entire culture to a caricature is offensive in any context (regardless of whether or not you would it offensive). The people who defend using native imagery for sports mascots often claim that the portrayal is intended as an honor, and that they are celebrating the culture instead of demeaning it.
All of your points are correct, and each one compounds the offense. But even if you turn it around and use white people as the mascot, a people and culture who have not been systematically oppressed, deprived of life, liberty, and property, it’s still an inherently prejudicial and ignorant thing to do. So any argument about how mascots are intended to promote or celebrate or honor a culture or a people still fails to justify the practice.
Isn’t that basically “I can’t be racist, I have black friends”? What if I told you that I’d been told by Native Americans that they DON’T like being called “Indian”? And if they are Indian, what do you call people from India, exactly? You know, Indians?
And others feel the same about the term “Native Americans.” It’s a big group of people from hundreds of independent nations that never had need for a collective term for themselves before Europeans arrived and started assigning labels.
There is no right answer on what to call them, the best you can do is use the term preferred by the people you’re interacting with at the moment, which will usually be their actual nation. For those situations where you are referring to them collectively, I’ve variously been told to use “Native Nations,” “American Indian,” “Native American,” and “Indigenous Peoples.” Each term will be liked by some and hated by others. Just be willing to change for the situation and people you’re talking to and you’ll be fine.
Oh, I do for sure. I’ll call people by any name or group or whatever if they ask. But I would never assume that a Native American is perfectly fine being called the equivalent of “a native or inhabitant of India, or a person of Indian descent.” That’s insane to me, and it’s insane to assume that they’d be fine with it. This whole thing is because of the irony of a person who was so clearly trying to defend Native Americans using a label that describes a completely different ethnic group. “No, not THOSE Indians, the other Indians, so named because a monster of a person landed here and thought he was somewhere else”. It’s just hilarious to me.
While I probably wouldn’t make “Indian” my first choice due to the negative historical connotations, we do have plenty of formal institutions – indigenous-led institutions among them – that use Indian in the name. So it’s bound to come up in casual discussion.
I think what is most important is that, if a group or individual expresses a preference, we should honor that preference where possible.
Even the term “indigenous” is problematic. It was the term used by the Romans to describe the subjugated peoples in remote provinces.
I’m not kidding, just last week I was participating in a diversity workshop run by people from Native Nations (their preferred term), and they regularly referred to “Indian country.” It’s a complicated term but it has been incorporated into their identity regardless of the fact that there is another group of people called Indians.
To be more specific you can say “American Indians” but even that’s problematic in the same way “Native American” is because you’re labeling them based on some Italian guy’s name. You’re so hung up on the “Indian” label but don’t seem to have a problem constantly using “Native American” when the people you’re referring to have absolutely nothing to do with Amerigo Vespucci.
It doesn’t matter what you think, dude. It’s a generally accepted term among the people it’s referring to. It’s usually better to use the name of their tribe, but that’s not always possible
That’s cool. I prefer to call people from India Indians if that’s alright. If I’d like to refer to a Native American as something else I’ll at least do them the courtesy of saying American Indians so they aren’t referred to as a completely separate ethnic group.
I’m indigenous and I personally have no problem with being called Indian but I know a few of my relatives hate the term. I guess it really depends on the person
I’m using the term I’ve been told to use to describe a group of people, by that group of people. Or at least a group of that people. If someone of that group comes up with a different term they’d like me to use I’ll happily use that, until then, I’ll use the last term I know to have been acceptable.
If you’re a member of that group and prefer a different term, then make that known.
If you’re not a member of that group, then you’re making assumptions for a group of people and calling it respect while completely disregarding the wishes of the people to whom you’re attempting to refer.
I’m not disregarding wishes. I’ll call any INDIVIDUAL whatever they want to be called. Groups will be referred to by the most accurate and accepted name. Indians are from India and it’s ridiculous to call Native Americans/American Indians that. It’s as ridiculous as calling any black person “African American”, like when the interviewer insisted on that terminology for Idris Elba, a black British man. That’s it. I’m not calling them “Redskins”, for example. I’m using a perfectly respectful and accepted term and not one that may or may not be accepted, depending on who you ask, and not one that is literally incorrect.
Edit: There’s a person directly below this comment whose relatives hate the term “Indian”.
So you speak for ALL American Indians, then? Do I speak for ALL Germans? Or have I been in the US long enough that I’m no longer German? My grandmother was born in Germany, is that too far? Or is it just skin color, I speak for all whites, no matter the country or culture of origin? I’m curious to the rules here- I shouldn’t speak for American Indians because I’m not one, right? So who can speak for all American Indians and all 547 distinct tribes (federally recognized)? Do you speak for every tribe? If not you, then who? Your phrasing was “Unless you’re American indian”, so… yes? You speak for all 547 tribes and 5.2 million people?
Buuuuuut… you did say “Unless you’re American indian”, so that does imply that you or someone else CAN speak for all of a group. So I’m a bit confused here. I will call you whatever you’d like me to call you, including “Indian” on its own if that’s what you’d prefer to be called (even though that doesn’t make sense to me), but you didn’t actually answer my questions. Let me try again- how is it bigoted to not assume that a group of people would want to be called something that is fundamentally incorrect by definition, has a turbulent history, and is not what most federal programs call them- you yourself say that the benefits go to “American Indians”, not “Indians”.
Thanks for the coloring page, is it one of your favorites?
I don’t feel insulted at all. Sorry.
That is what we call Privilege.
With a capital P? It’s a proper noun?
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yeah it’s a privilege to be outraged about stupid shit
This is a perfect Rorshach/Newspeak statement: you’ll either agree or be outraged depending on what you guess about the speaker’s ideology.
I’m gonna assume OP agrees with me about _which things_are stupid and go on to enjoy my morning.
Privilege would be being insulted at this (as a white person).
I can’t believe you guys are really missing the point this hard. You’re not supposed to be insulted. The fact that you’re not insulted IS your white privilege. That’s what it’s highlighting. You’re tripping over the point here.
I strongly disagree, I grew up in a 100% white community in a 99% white country. In that situation there is no white privilege, because everybody is white.
And I see zero problem with that shirt. I don’t see why anybody would wear it, usually that kind of shirt would be worn, because you agree with or even is a fan of what is depicted.
I wouldn’t mind wearing a BLM shirt for instance, because no matter what you skin color is, it is a true statement.
White privilege is the privilege of never having to think about your race or be impacted by it. You literally just defined it.
The shirt points that out. You have no problem with it.
That’s neither exclusive nor specifically for being white, lots of people of other skin colors don’t have to worry about that, and aren’t impacted by it. I have never heard anyone talk about yellow or white privilege for Japanese.
I’m not denying white privilege exists, but the fact that I don’t mind a T-shirt saying Caucasian, is not a symptom of that IMO.
If I was a fan of Indian culture, and had a shirt with the name of a tribe, please explain why that would be offensive to an Indian?
Maybe then I can understand the point some people here are trying to make.
Edit:
I guess this could be related to some sports using Indian imagery, that is completely out of context, and could be perceived as cultural appropriation I guess. They are playing under a “false” banner. But we don’t have that or anything similar in Europe AFAIK.
It’s exclusively white in America. I’m sure there are other countries with other systems. I don’t live in those so I don’t know their history and systems.
Not everything is about USA, “We” meaning white Americans is a pretty big dose of being self centered.
If you’re not talking about America, in a thread about a topic about Native Americans and their symbolism, then I admit I have no idea what you’re going on about.
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Would you hold to the position that the white folks of your country didn’t benefit from colonialism & exploitation of people elsewhere in the world, resulting in a significant positive effect on generational wealth? Were your social institutions, such as universities and churches, built without any input from colonial exploitation, or doing business with those who did exploit other races for profit?
Privilege isn’t just about your local police treating you better than a brown person. It’s also about your skin color opening doors to education, power, and wealth.
Pretty much yes, our only possession of what could be called foreign land is Greenland, and that’s a huge economic deficit.
But even if we still have some privileges from colonial powers, that does not change the fact of not being particularly privileged in the society I live in when growing up.
Meaning it hasn’t formed my character on how I regard other people.
You could say I was privileged in not being under privileged or discriminated against. that in itself is of course of huge value. But not really a privilege compared to everyone I grew up with.
Dude, you guys really benefitted from plundering the brits.
Ah yes, the good old days. 😋
Many of them even asked us to come back a couple of years ago. They have had some problems ruling themselves.
In jest I’m sure, or was it?
Privilege is generally fairly invisible to the people who have it. Like privilege of unrestricted travel. European nations with a high number of white people enjoy the privilege of their passports and visas allowing them to essentially walk into a high number of other countries. Let’s say… Denmark who has a whopping 159 countries that allow them free transit through boarders. If your country is predominantly not white and has broken ties with European colonization or has a non-European government structure then you might have free transit through approximately one quarter of the number of free countries and a number of additional stipulations are in place where you might theoretically have “free transit” but have to write ahead about your reasons for transit and can be denied access for things like visiting the deathbeds of dying family members.
Privilege isn’t just something that affects you from the standpoint of how well treated you are in comparison to the people immediately around you, it’s formative to your mindset because there are layers of restrictions of freedoms, choices and behaviours you don’t even have to know about because they do not apply to you. If you did not grow up with an expectation of having to make do with visibly less then privilege absolutely has shaped you and your worldview.
Not feeling privileged is part of privilege itself. Ask yourself if you feel like your experience has made you feel like a true citizen of your country? Can you wear clothes that allow you to feel modest by the standard of your religion without hastle? Were you as a child ever subjected to additional classes to reform your home culture? Privilege is as simple as feeling like you are home and nobody questions you being there.
I agree and understand that.
I’m sure for instance Singapore and Japan enjoy mostly similar benefits.
It has nothing to do with being white. Ergo it is not a white privilege. The same goes for for instance Americans, the number of countries they can visit is not tied to their skin color. Despite that, there is no doubt all white Americans enjoy some degree of white privilege, that does not mean the same goes for all other countries.
Wow, that’s one hell of a cherry pick that left 90% of what I said on the table. One might also note that I mentioned “colonized by a European nation” and picking the two Asian nations that still host UK and US military bases and are maintaining democratic systems directly implemented by those occupying powers which continue as primary economic bedfellows isn’t exactly disproving my point.
If you’re going to be lazy then why bother replying?
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Right? Like, you should be honored that their mascot would be a guy who looks exactly like you. He does, he looks exactly like you. It’s celebrating how your people were brave warriors who fought with honor despite being uncultured savages, and you should be proud to have your entire culture condensed into one easily imitated mascot. Also, you should be thrilled how they chant “Defense” to the tune of Amazing Grace and Ave Maria, you should love that because those are your songs. How could you possibly be insulted by such an honor?
Context is important here.
I wouldn’t be offended at a team called Caucasians, filled entirely with Indian players. But I don’t live in the same universe that Indian people do.
But maybe if white people made up 2% of the population, after being systematically eliminated by Indians to make use of our land, maybe if white people were relegated to the poorest, least productive areas of the country and told to be thankful for it, and maybe if the word Caucasian was kind of a rude way to refer to my skin color, I could see myself being offended at the idea.
This one’s on me, because I was trying to make a point and be sarcastic at the same time.
While I agree with you, I’ll quibble that context isn’t actually important here. The point of the shirt, and the point I was trying to make, was that reducing an entire culture to a caricature is offensive in any context (regardless of whether or not you would it offensive). The people who defend using native imagery for sports mascots often claim that the portrayal is intended as an honor, and that they are celebrating the culture instead of demeaning it.
All of your points are correct, and each one compounds the offense. But even if you turn it around and use white people as the mascot, a people and culture who have not been systematically oppressed, deprived of life, liberty, and property, it’s still an inherently prejudicial and ignorant thing to do. So any argument about how mascots are intended to promote or celebrate or honor a culture or a people still fails to justify the practice.
It’s hilarious that you’re trying to defend Native Americans but call them “Indians”.
It’s one of the multiple accepted terms for them,I have personally known a family who preferred the term offer others
Isn’t that basically “I can’t be racist, I have black friends”? What if I told you that I’d been told by Native Americans that they DON’T like being called “Indian”? And if they are Indian, what do you call people from India, exactly? You know, Indians?
And others feel the same about the term “Native Americans.” It’s a big group of people from hundreds of independent nations that never had need for a collective term for themselves before Europeans arrived and started assigning labels.
There is no right answer on what to call them, the best you can do is use the term preferred by the people you’re interacting with at the moment, which will usually be their actual nation. For those situations where you are referring to them collectively, I’ve variously been told to use “Native Nations,” “American Indian,” “Native American,” and “Indigenous Peoples.” Each term will be liked by some and hated by others. Just be willing to change for the situation and people you’re talking to and you’ll be fine.
Oh, I do for sure. I’ll call people by any name or group or whatever if they ask. But I would never assume that a Native American is perfectly fine being called the equivalent of “a native or inhabitant of India, or a person of Indian descent.” That’s insane to me, and it’s insane to assume that they’d be fine with it. This whole thing is because of the irony of a person who was so clearly trying to defend Native Americans using a label that describes a completely different ethnic group. “No, not THOSE Indians, the other Indians, so named because a monster of a person landed here and thought he was somewhere else”. It’s just hilarious to me.
While I probably wouldn’t make “Indian” my first choice due to the negative historical connotations, we do have plenty of formal institutions – indigenous-led institutions among them – that use Indian in the name. So it’s bound to come up in casual discussion.
I think what is most important is that, if a group or individual expresses a preference, we should honor that preference where possible.
Even the term “indigenous” is problematic. It was the term used by the Romans to describe the subjugated peoples in remote provinces.
I’m not kidding, just last week I was participating in a diversity workshop run by people from Native Nations (their preferred term), and they regularly referred to “Indian country.” It’s a complicated term but it has been incorporated into their identity regardless of the fact that there is another group of people called Indians.
To be more specific you can say “American Indians” but even that’s problematic in the same way “Native American” is because you’re labeling them based on some Italian guy’s name. You’re so hung up on the “Indian” label but don’t seem to have a problem constantly using “Native American” when the people you’re referring to have absolutely nothing to do with Amerigo Vespucci.
It doesn’t matter what you think, dude. It’s a generally accepted term among the people it’s referring to. It’s usually better to use the name of their tribe, but that’s not always possible
That’s cool. I prefer to call people from India Indians if that’s alright. If I’d like to refer to a Native American as something else I’ll at least do them the courtesy of saying American Indians so they aren’t referred to as a completely separate ethnic group.
Some of the most racist and bigoted people, are also very politically correct.
Some of the least racist and bigoted people, are also very politically incorrect.
PC language is often used by people who are awkward around minorities or want to disguise their true intentions.
Political correctness has its place, but it’s better to judge people by what they do or say, not how they say it.
You need more upvotes
Grew up near a res friendo, it was generally the preferred term. But tell me more about that horse you’re on
Oh hey pot! I’m kettle, nice to meet you!
The fuck you on about “horse I’m on” lmao, you just did the same exact thing
I’m indigenous and I personally have no problem with being called Indian but I know a few of my relatives hate the term. I guess it really depends on the person
I’m using the term I’ve been told to use to describe a group of people, by that group of people. Or at least a group of that people. If someone of that group comes up with a different term they’d like me to use I’ll happily use that, until then, I’ll use the last term I know to have been acceptable.
If you’re a member of that group and prefer a different term, then make that known.
If you’re not a member of that group, then you’re making assumptions for a group of people and calling it respect while completely disregarding the wishes of the people to whom you’re attempting to refer.
I’m not disregarding wishes. I’ll call any INDIVIDUAL whatever they want to be called. Groups will be referred to by the most accurate and accepted name. Indians are from India and it’s ridiculous to call Native Americans/American Indians that. It’s as ridiculous as calling any black person “African American”, like when the interviewer insisted on that terminology for Idris Elba, a black British man. That’s it. I’m not calling them “Redskins”, for example. I’m using a perfectly respectful and accepted term and not one that may or may not be accepted, depending on who you ask, and not one that is literally incorrect.
Edit: There’s a person directly below this comment whose relatives hate the term “Indian”.
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So you speak for ALL American Indians, then? Do I speak for ALL Germans? Or have I been in the US long enough that I’m no longer German? My grandmother was born in Germany, is that too far? Or is it just skin color, I speak for all whites, no matter the country or culture of origin? I’m curious to the rules here- I shouldn’t speak for American Indians because I’m not one, right? So who can speak for all American Indians and all 547 distinct tribes (federally recognized)? Do you speak for every tribe? If not you, then who? Your phrasing was “Unless you’re American indian”, so… yes? You speak for all 547 tribes and 5.2 million people?
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Buuuuuut… you did say “Unless you’re American indian”, so that does imply that you or someone else CAN speak for all of a group. So I’m a bit confused here. I will call you whatever you’d like me to call you, including “Indian” on its own if that’s what you’d prefer to be called (even though that doesn’t make sense to me), but you didn’t actually answer my questions. Let me try again- how is it bigoted to not assume that a group of people would want to be called something that is fundamentally incorrect by definition, has a turbulent history, and is not what most federal programs call them- you yourself say that the benefits go to “American Indians”, not “Indians”.
Thanks for the coloring page, is it one of your favorites?
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In the usa many do use the term Indian over native American. Not all it varries from place to place.
Baby steps…
Or maybe they are not familiar with sportsball teams and are confusing the logo with that of the Cleveland Indians.
I had to look it up.
They actually recently changed that name. They’re the Cleveland Guardians as of 2021.