Chief Among the Silliness
By George F. Will
Washington Post
Thursday, January 5, 2006; A15
The University of Illinois must soon decide whether, and if so how, to
fight an exceedingly silly edict from the NCAA. That organization's
primary function is to require college athletics to be no more crassly
exploitative and commercial than is absolutely necessary. But now the
NCAA is going to police cultural sensitivity, as it understands that.
Hence the decision to declare Chief Illiniwek "hostile and abusive" to
Native Americans.
Censorship -- e.g., campus speech codes -- often is academic
liberalism's preferred instrument of social improvement, and now the
NCAA's censors say: The Chief must go, as must the university's logo of
a Native American in feathered headdress. Otherwise the NCAA will not
allow the university to host any postseason tournaments or events.
This story of progress, as progressives understand that, began during
halftime of a football game in 1926, when an undergraduate studying
Indian culture performed a dance dressed as a chief. Since then, a
student has always served as Chief Illiniwek, who has become the symbol
of the university that serves a state named after the Illini
confederation of about a half-dozen tribes that were virtually
annihilated in the 1760s by rival tribes.
In 1930 the student then portraying Chief Illiniwek traveled to South
Dakota to receive authentic raiment from the Oglala Sioux. In 1967 and
1982, representatives of the Sioux, who had not yet discovered that
they were supposed to feel abused, came to the Urbana-Champaign campus
to augment the outfits Chief Illiniwek wears at football and basketball
games.
But grievance groups have multiplied, seeking reparations for
historical wrongs and regulations to assuage current injuries inflicted
by "insensitivity." One of America's booming businesses is the
indignation industry, which manufactures the synthetic outrage needed
to fuel identity politics.
The NCAA is allowing Florida State University and the University of
Utah to continue calling their teams Seminoles and Utes, respectively,
because those two tribes approve of the tradition. The Saginaw Chippewa
tribe starchily denounces any "outside entity" -- that would be you,
NCAA -- that would disrupt the tribe's "rich relationship" with Central
Michigan University and its teams, the Chippewas. The University of
North Carolina at Pembroke can continue calling its teams the Braves.
Bravery is a virtue, so perhaps the 21 percent of the school's students
who are Native Americans consider the name a compliment.
The University of North Dakota's Fighting Sioux may have to find
another nickname because the various Sioux tribes cannot agree about
whether they are insulted. But the only remnant of the Illini
confederation, the Peoria tribe, is now in Oklahoma. Under its chief,
John Froman, the tribe is too busy running a casino and golf course to
care about Chief Illiniwek. The NCAA ethicists probably reason that the
Chief must go because no portion of the Illini confederation remains to
defend him.
Or to be offended by him, but never mind that, or this: In 1995 the
Office of Civil Rights in President Bill Clinton's Education
Department, a nest of sensitivity-mongers, rejected the claim that the
Chief and the name Fighting Illini created for anyone a "hostile
environment" on campus.
In 2002 Sports Illustrated published a poll of 351 Native Americans,
217 living on reservations, 134 living off. Eighty-one percent said
high school and college teams should not stop using Indian nicknames.
But in any case, why should anyone's disapproval of a nickname doom it?
When, in the multiplication of entitlements, did we produce an
entitlement for everyone to go through life without being annoyed by
anything, even a team's nickname? If some Irish or Scots were to take
offense at Notre Dame's Fighting Irish or the Fighting Scots of
Monmouth College, what rule of morality would require the rest of us to
care? Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the
willingness to say, "What you are doing is none of my business" and
"What I am doing is none of your business."
But this is an age when being an offended busybody is considered
evidence of advanced thinking and an exquisite sensibility. So, People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has demanded that the University
of South Carolina's teams not be called Gamecocks because cockfighting
is cruel. It also is illegal in South Carolina.
In 1972 the University of Massachusetts at Amherst replaced the
nickname Redmen with Minutemen. White men carrying guns? If some
advanced thinkers are made miserable by this, will the NCAA's censors
offer relief? Scottsdale Community College in Arizona was wise to adopt
the nickname "Fighting Artichokes." There is no grievance group
representing the lacerated feelings of artichokes. Yet.