The new Trump target is Native Americans. Just when we thought it couldn’t get more racist and ridiculous. He’s now after the NFL Washington Commanders and baseball’s Cleveland Guardians. In his twisted sense of history, Trump thinks the name change back to the offensive nicknames the Redskins and Indians the will restore Native Americans’ pride in their hertiage. Both teams and their fans have basically responded with stay out of our business and do your job. Trump’s response has been to threaten to stop a new stadium from being built for the Commanders in Washington DC. We’ve seen these threats before. In these cases, Trump has no standing or right to interfere.
It took hundreds of years for Americans to finally realize these names are offensive to Native Americans. In addition to the Commanders and Guardians, many colleges and high schools are changing their mascots. I went to a college where we were called the Brown Indians. The mascots were male and female students in full Native American dress dancing around the gym floor at basketball games. A few years after I graduated, the school changed the name. Other schools have done the same. St. John’s University in New York dropped “Redmen” to Red Storm. I wonder if people would have been okay with names like “Black Men” or “Yellow Men”?
Trump has no sense of history. White treatment of the Native Americans may be second only to the treatment of blacks. In 1830, the US government enacted the Indian Removal Act under President Andrew Jackson who had his own issues with race. It allowed the army to forcibly remove the natives from their ancestral homes in the Southeastern United States to present day Oklahoma. They included Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminoles and others. Jackson said it was done for national security and white settlers needed room for expansion. It became known as the Trail of Tears. Thousand of Native Americans died from disease, starvation and exposure. They were held in detention camps along the way. Sound familiar. It took thirty-three days. History shows us the terrible conditions that resulted in some of the reservations that Native Americans were forced into by westward expansion. Decades of warfare between white settlers and the US Army left thousands dead on both sides. Many treaties were broken. The Seminoles are only nation never to sign a peace treaty with the government.
Native Americans even got a name by mistake. When early explorers arrived and encountered them, they thought they were in India. They went the wrong way. Native Americans have been trying to preserve their heritage for hundreds of years. They are broken into many different tribes. They are not just one group with one identity.
Racism has been part of American history since the first foreigners set foot on land here. Many have struggled to right the terrible wrongs against all races. There is now a terrible shadow over the country. We’re being led by people who feel they are being displaced by immigrants and that threatens their way of life. It has always been a rumbling undercurrent of our society. The Trail of Tears has never ended.
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