{"id":9480,"date":"2009-09-15T10:51:28","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T15:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=9480"},"modified":"2012-10-17T02:24:27","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T07:24:27","slug":"go-orientials-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/09\/15\/go-orientials-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Orientals Vs. Gauchos: Who Are You Rooting For?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angry Asian Man<\/a> wrote about two East High Schools–in Rochester, New York<\/a> and Akron, Ohio<\/a>–with a peculiar mascot: the Orientals.<\/p>\n

East High School merch<\/a> (Rochester, New York):<\/p>\n

\"Capture\"<\/p>\n

Screen shot of the East High School\u00a0website<\/a> (Akron, Ohio):<\/p>\n

\"Capture2\"<\/p>\n

Notice the Asian-y font and the stylistic dragon.<\/p>\n

When high schools and sports teams recruit a type of person as a mascot, it objectifies and caricatures them.\u00a0 It also encourages opposing teams to say things like “Kill the Orientals.”\u00a0 This can only be okay when\u00a0we aren’t really thinking about these kinds of people as real humans beings.<\/p>\n

This reminded me:\u00a0 As an undergraduate, I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara.\u00a0 Our mascot was the Gaucho, which I remember being described as a Mexican cowboy (though South American cowboy<\/a> may be more descriptive).\u00a0 I went by the UCSB website and found these two logos.\u00a0 There is a story about the first identifying it as a brand new logo<\/a>; the second is for kids<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Capture4\"<\/p>\n

\"capture5\"<\/p>\n

I am troubled by the Gaucho mascot for the same reasons that I don’t like the Orientals mascot, but at least authentic gauchos are not likely to enroll at UCSB the way that “Orientals” are likely students of the East High Schools.<\/p>\n

Then again, this is the image on the front page of the UCSB athlectics website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Capture3\"<\/p>\n

It does indeed read: “GLORY. HONOR. COURAGE. TORTILLAS.”\u00a0 This seems to invalidate any argument that the use of the Gaucho mascot is “respectful.”<\/p>\n

Thinking\u00a0about the\u00a0Orientals and the Gauchos, alongside the many American Indian mascots<\/a> still found in the U.S.,\u00a0Notre Dame’s\u00a0Fighting Irish<\/a>, and the\u00a0soccer team in the Netherlands who call\u00a0themselves the Jews<\/a>, may give us some perspective on this mascot phenomenon that thinking about one at a time doesn’t.\u00a0 If we feel that one of these mascots is less discriminatory than another, what drives that feeling?\u00a0 And is it logical?\u00a0 Or\u00a0does it stem from a trained sensibility that isn’t applied to all marginalized groups across the board?\u00a0 Or is it in response to different characteristics of these different groups?\u00a0 Or different contexts?<\/p>\n

Maybe all five mascots are equally offensive and offensive for the same reasons.\u00a0 But thinking about them together may also be useful for\u00a0teasing out how, exactly, they are offensive.\u00a0 What do you think?<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Lisa Wade is a\u00a0professor of sociology at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angry Asian Man wrote about two East High Schools–in Rochester, New York and Akron, Ohio–with a peculiar mascot: the Orientals. East High School merch (Rochester, New York): Screen shot of the East High School\u00a0website (Akron, Ohio): Notice the Asian-y font and the stylistic dragon. When high schools and sports teams recruit a type of person […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[279,34,1817,1789,285,1759,1754,1757,42,108],"class_list":["post-9480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-objectification","tag-education","tag-nation-ireland","tag-nation-the-netherlands","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-religion","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9480"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12784,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9480\/revisions\/12784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}