A real team!
Itâs even better because âCaucasianâ is a dumb term for white folks.
Doesnât work. Itâs my understanding that derogatory terms have less of an impact on the majority than a minority. Iâm white, and the shirt/logo doesnât matter to meâŚ
Regarding fightinâ whities, Iâd actually wear that t-shirtâŚ
I think all this misses the point. Just calling your team The Indians, really isnât all that bad.
Its that they use a logo of a grinning idiot to represent the Indians.
So a similar slight against white folk would involve calling your team, âThe Whitesâ and then using a picture of maybe a fat white guy with cow eyes and a who farted T-shirt.
Putting a blond guy in a collared shirt on there doesnât exactly hit the mark.
I assume that appending âSpreading our home-field advantage since 1492!â might be pushing the joke a little far?
Yes, that is beyond the pale.
Also, wearing a money symbol like a feather is probably still a little offensive to some native folks.
Be funnier printed on Y-fronts tho.
Is âCaucasianâ a derogatory term to you?
I think I get your point, though. âHonky,â âCrackerâ and âOfayâ also donât sting most white folks much.
Itâs interesting that the company that makes that shirt happens to be based in Cleveland. I was at a ball game there last month and noticed that the Chief Wahoo logo is much less prevalent than it used to be. Most people I saw were wearing hats with the âCâ logo instead.
Once upon a time there was a Negro league team called the Atlanta Black Crackers.
Thatâs what I thought, until I learned that it means whip cracker.
Lots of white people seem to hate to be called racist (remember Ws reaction to Kanyeâs rant during Katrina?). So, how about The Fightinâ Racists?
As a white person, honky makes me laugh, actually. What does that say about me, I wonder? And Iâve never heard OfayâŚ?
Well yeah, most white people canât even admit that since they live in a white supremacist society and culture, they most likely ARE racist, without even realizing it. So yeah, something like the Redfield Racists certainly works for me.
That youâre white, I guess.
Yeah, Iâm no honky, Iâm a hep cat, sis
Barring development of the Ur-Slur, the epithet so vile that it offends any cognitively normal human with an intact Wernickeâs area(which would be about the coolest thing to hit linguistics in ages, if it were to exist; but Iâm not holding my breath), ethnic slurs are pretty hopeless without a suitable in-group/out-group context and the right power arrangements.
Weâre all honkys, honky!
A lot of noise of a fundamentally meaningless issue.
I suggest to focus more on ways to really change the oppressed groupsâ plight (education mostly, from elementary school level and beyond!). But that is not a quick-results thing and does not have the pleasurable element of self-righteously condemn others for words or symbols.
Focus at disadvantaged communities, whether red, black, brown, yellow, white (gasp!), green, or purple with pink polka dots. Leverage existing resources; if there are three locals that are able to work as quite good teachers, no need to send in three others from other area; one to come in occasionally to coach is often enough.
As one of the first steps, Iâd suggest decoupling of educational (and test!) materials from corporate interests. Lower the cost of textbooks to near the price of raw paper+printing. Leverage crowdsourcing, with strong accuracy-checks. Leverage transnational cooperation (physics is the same regardless where you are); a bilingual physics/math textbook can work anywhere from Canada to Mexico and below, and at the same time helps to teach the other language. And, most important, teach thinking and questioning (and finding answers, but the art of posing the right question can be considered as important as finding the answers).
We have a bigger long-term problems than a sports team logo; one of them is too few people in engineering disciplines. Bring down the cost of education so even the lower-income groups can comfortably reach it. The high-income groups will still go for their lawyers and economists and other useless-crap degrees, because there is a promise of more money. But if the civilization has to survive, there will be still needed engineers and technicians of all sorts.
Meanwhile we waste energy on political correctnessâŚ