End of the Month Controversy: Change the Mascot

Jim Thorpe- one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. Professional Baseball Player, Professional Football Player,
Olympic Gold Medalist, and Native American.

This being America, you can tell the change in the season by what sports are on television.

In March, that first time I'm flipping through channels and see baseball, it's like the first time the sun has ever shone. I cry, most years. That's not an exaggeration. Because baseball means spring, and dear lord are midwestern winters long.

So I know it was just around the twins' birthday, when baseball was lagging and football only just getting started again, that my husband narrowly avoided having a very uncomfortable conversation with his children.

M loves sports. And, poor guy, he loves his home teams. So he lives in a perpetual state of nervous disappointment, half heartedly hoping that the Vikings will actually lose every single game so they get the best draft picks, while genuinely wanting them to win. And, poor guy, he's also a Twins fan. So these past few years have been rough on him.

A part of our national culture, identity, and heritage

Nothing, not even the colossal failures of his favorite teams, could keep him from sharing his love of organized sports with his children. And his children, being inquisitive and intelligent four year olds, want to sit with him and quiz him about the games, as they understand them.

And so it was, not long after their birthday, that he sat watching football with his children, and found himself answering questions about the teams.

"What is that team wearing orange pants?"
"Those are the Broncos. They're from Denver."
"Is Denver on my globe?"
"Sure is."
"What's a Bronco?"
"It's a name for a horse. See the picture of the horse in the corner? That's a Bronco."
"What's the team wearing yellow pants?"
"Those are... that's the team from Washington."
"Like where Aunt Something Funny lives?"
"Yes, exactly. They play where Aunt Something Funny lives."
"We have a book about Washington!"
"Yup!"

I could see him breathe more easily. He thought he'd avoided the worst of it. But no.

"Daddy? What are their names?"
"That guy's called RG3! Isn't that a funny name?"
"But what's the TEAM named?"
"They're called the Redskins."

He said it so calmly, as though if he completely ignored it he'd just be able to gloss it over. And then he waited.

He waited because he knew she was going to ask him, "What's a Redskin?" and he'd have to answer. He'd have to come up with something to tell her a "Redskin" was that would still let her know that it's not okay to reduce people to racial slurs.

We live in a very diverse city. A diverse neighborhood. Heck, a diverse building. And one of the best parts of living somewhere with a culture of diversity is that it's nearly impossible to avoid learning to be respectful and sensitive of people's differences, and of thoughtless offenses people make against them.

I would be pissed as hell if somebody used a racial slur to describe my neighbors. I should be pissed as hell whenever anybody uses a racial slur of any kind, towards anyone.

But you sort of get used to it. People sort of say to themselves, "Oh, it's nostalgic," or "It's not like there's anybody here who would take offense."

And that's bad logic. Because, like in my home, there's always somebody who can be hurt by learning something ugly. And my husband sat on the couch in front of a football game quietly panicking because he was sure he was about to have to tell his four year old daughters that there was a game they were watching, on television, for fun. starring a team who's name was a way to dehumanize not just one race of people, but dozens (if not hundreds) of specific indigenous ethnicities.

I got my children this WONDERFUL book that I loved
as a kid, so that next time we talk about this we'll have
a better frame of reference.

And you know what? She didn't ask. She miraculously accepted that "Redskins" was their name, and left it at that. And he was relieved. For a few hours.

That night he got riled up before bed. "I should have told her," he said. "I should have told her that it's not a nice word, and she shouldn't use it."

And I fell in love with him maybe just a little bit more.

All over this country, we have a problem with offensive language. I'm not talking about swear words and bleeped out songs on the radio, I'm talking about something deeper and more insidious. I'm talking about governors who have "colorful" names for their family ranches. I'm talking about rural high schools with predominantly white student bodies that have a caricature of an Arab for their mascot.

In America, we've worked through some of these issues. We no longer have professional sports clubs with names like "The New York Kikes," but for some reason breaking down indigenous people to these stereotypes runs rampant. It's everywhere. "The Redmen," "The Chiefs," "The Brownies," and even "The Savages" are all remarkably common names for sports teams, with correspondingly dehumanizing mascots.

And why is that okay?

It's not okay.

One of the things about being a parent is you never stop teaching. Just yesterday I was driving the girls to preschool, and we were talking about not hitting pedestrians with the car. SI pointed at one person crossing the street and shouted, "IT MOVED!"

And I gave her a lecture on how we NEVER call people "it." People are people, so we call them "they" or "who" or "he" or "she" or whatever else they want to be called. But never "it." "It" is a word for things that are less than human, in our own estimation, and when we call somebody an "it," we deny them an element of their own humanity.

Did she understand all of that? Probably not. But she won't go around calling people "it," of that I'm certain.

And reducing all the native peoples of the United States to one offensive "it" for the sake of continuity in a team history....

Well, if Dan Snyder was in the back seat of my minivan, he'd get a similar lecture.

But the real question of whether or not something is offensive isn't whether it's uncomfortable for me to talk about with my children. (Although that's a pretty good indicator.) It's whether or not anybody is hurt.

This ad makes it pretty clear what the answer is.



The time has long since come and gone for this type of dehumanizing characature to leave the spotlight of American culture.

It's time to accept that we, as a culture, have made a lot of mistakes in the past, and commit to change.

And this is as fine a place to start as any.

The Worst Part

I am not a perfect mother.

To be honest, most days I'm not sure I even fall solidly into the boundaries of what makes a "good" mother.*

My kids are pretty much free range, or as much as they can be in about 1400 square feet of third floor walkup. And I'm a work-from-home kind of gal- I do a lot of ignoring my children.

Until, of course, they do something really awful.

I comfort myself that I must be a good mom because, when that something awful results in an injury, I'm the person they want to comfort them. They don't just accept my comfort, they truly respond to it. "I want to snuggle," and "I love you, mommy," are phrases I hear constantly. I know, I'm very lucky. But whenever those disasters strike, I really feel like I don't deserve the affection.

About a week and a half ago, SI lost a toenail. Well, "lost" doesn't begin to describe it. She was running pell mell down the hall and tried to leap over a "picnic" she'd left out. Because she has inherited my extremely uncoordinated genetics, she didn't make it. Instead she landed on a plastic plate, slid a few feet, and her toes slammed into the tiny space under the coat closet door, tearing her smallest toenail right out of its bed.

I knew something was really wrong with her first wail. And I did nothing. I leaned away from the sink full of dishes I was washing, and called out if she was okay. She wailed again.

And again, I did nothing.

It wasn't until she was bawling and staggering to get up that I walked to the kitchen doorway, and held out my arms for her to run to me. That's right, she can do the work of coming to me if I'm going to comfort her, too.

To say that I felt like the worst mother in the entire fucking world when I saw all the blood coming out of her toe would probably be an understatement. I felt worse than that. Subhuman. I felt like slime.

I scooped her up in my arms and squeezed her and kissed her and held her and tried my hardest not to flinch or pass out when I examined her toe, and I cleaned it and bandaged it and called her doctor, and then I helped her Skype with Poppa, because he'd just had foot surgery so he had an even bigger owie on his toe.

And she hasn't cried about it since. Not once. Not even when I had to finally clip it free from the tiny corner embedded in her cuticle so it would stop dangling off. That kid is a trooper.

She has to be. She bangs herself up practically every day. If she doesn't have a bruise from running into a doorjamb, she has a blister from yet another pair of shoes she's managed to outgrow, or a scratch from flailing a toy with a sharp edge, or a lump on her head from falling backwards off the couch, or scraped knees from wiping out on the sidewalk.

DD's also constantly banged up. She bonks her head on drawers and cabinets, slips and falls while running in her favorite (and very slippery) socks, falls out of her chair when she fidgets and bangs her chin on the table.

And I pretty much ignore it. They're kids. They get banged up. It comes from constantly moving at high speeds in very crowded quarters. I'm constantly banged up, too, just from chasing them.

"Future Writer" Just like mommy.

But I ignore a lot more than that. When I'm "working," writing or editing or revising or submitting or any number of the things I'm doing to advance a passion I can hardly call a "career" without feeling like a fraud, I just ignore them.

Once in a while I look up and grin at those three little girls, playing so happily, so independently. And I leave it at that.

But mostly I only look up when something goes wrong.

Tonight, something went wrong. After supper we all cleaned up the living room, and the dining room, because they were seas of misplaced toys. Then while I did some dishes they danced in the clean dining room, and when I was done I set them up in front of Night at the Museum with cups of water. Ten minutes later I heard the sound that every parent dreads.

Total silence.

And, like a fool, I let it go on for a whole five minutes.

When I got to the living room,  the furniture was all soaked through. They had been entertaining themselves by spitting all their water all over the couch, arm chair, throw cushions, and afghans.

SI was wearing a new shirt, too. "The other shirt was soaking wet," she told me.

To say I was angry would be an understatement. I was living. I screamed and yelled, I made them clean up the mess, and I put them to bed after only cups of milk instead of real dinners. I had to calm down quite a bit before I convinced myself of even that compromise.

I was so angry I nearly had a heart attack. That's no exaggeration- I have a neurological condition called dysautonomia that occasionally causes me to have bouts of tachycardia and arrhythmia. It took four minutes of careful, focused breathing before the pain in my chest died down.

Four minutes where I could think of nothing other than what a poor excuse for a parent I am.

It was water. Water. Not milk, not juice, not even cracker crumbs. Just... water.

And I lost it.

I could come up with a million excuses for my own temper. I haven't really eaten today (true), I've been ridiculously exhausted since DD's trip to the ER (also true), I've had zero time or motivation for self care or emotional maintenance (true)...

It doesn't matter. What matters is that this isn't an isolated incident. I'm a ticking time bomb of rage just waiting to happen.

I'm constantly stunned and impressed by what my daughters know, what they're interested in. I'm constantly shocked that they've managed to pick up such spectacular life skills and academic skills from me being vague and distant 90% of the time.

I'm amazed at how a day where I had truly sweet, wonderful, loving moments with all three of my children, individually, could turn into a night where I'm shaking and panting and talking myself down from having a triple martini for dinner, with a pint of ice cream as a chaser.

I know I should calm down and remember the good parts.

DD sitting on my lap to read useless informational pamphlets after I put her hair into a ponytail at the doctor's office.

SI took this picture

SI holding my hand as we walked to the car from the preschool, asking me how my day was and listening to my answers.

RH, running up to me and hugging my knees, over and over again.

But it's all eclipsed by this awful, painful hunch in my shoulders, by the crushing weight of guilt pressing down on me, but the overwhelming awareness of how ridiculously, improbably, outrageously tired I am.

I feel like I must not be a good mom. A good mom wouldn't freak out over a couple of pints of spilled water.

A good mom wouldn't scream at her children over something as harmless as a wet couch.

A good mom wouldn't only be available when she has to be. She'd be available whenever her children wanted her to be.

And that's not me. I'm not that mom. I'm the mom telling the kids to play by themselves so I can get something done. I wouldn't judge any other mom for doing this, but I'm sure as hell judging myself.

And my verdict is that I could do better. I must do better.

And the worst part is knowing that I probably won't.





*Yes, I know, I'm a good mom. Just as wracked with self doubt as the next person.