Sidestepping The Question

It’s not easy being a Supreme Court Justice, I imagine.  As we’ve seen with the confirmation hearings in recent years, just getting the job demands you be laid bare before a public and will be judged not for your deeds, but for your ideology.

But once they’re confirmed and take up their place on that bench, they’re supposed to take on the tough questions they were grilled so hard to determine their views for.

That includes the ugly dark questions of racism and bias that have formed such a core part of the identity of the United States since before its inception.

Instead, this month the U.S. Supreme Court ran away from having to look at that dark face.  They declined, without comment, to hear the appeal of a group of Native Americans against the name of the football team for the nation’s capital itself – The Washington Redskins.

What makes this an act of cowardice by the Supremes is that the case, brought in an attempt to force the team to stop using this derogatory and racist term, was decided on a technicality.

The effective end result, as far as the Supremes are concerned I think, is that they won’t have to actually rule on the racist nature of the team name itself.

That’s their cowardice.

In Brown vs Board of Education, the nation was shown that the Supreme Court could, would, and did, make a stand against racism, and for the rights of every citizen to be equally protected, nurtured, and defended under the law.

In Brown vs Board of Education, the Court’s decision sent waves through US society, finally bringing the status of blacks to match that of whites.  That took guts.

In Harjo v. Pro-Football Inc (the case in question), it seems the Washington Redskins are “too big to fail” – If the Supremes had heard the case, and ruled for the plaintiffs, it would have been an acknowledgement of the ongoing racism, in sports at least, towards Native Americans for so long.  Football in the US is a huge money making operation, and the case challenged one of the biggest franchises.

They blinked.

This is simply an indication of the refusal of America to accept and acknowledge what it has done in the past, and is still doing, to Native Americans.

As I’ve discussed in the past¹², the Washington Redskins have become a symbolic demonstration of this pervasive and insidious dehumanized racism.

So now we have to contend with the weekly chants and banners and TV sportsdrones all effectively using the NDN equivalent of the “N” word with official sanction from on high.  We will continue to see Zema Williams in the equivalent of blackface cheering on the team every week, a black man helping to perpetuate the stereotype of Indians³.

I’m not the only one that has pointed out that if the team were named “The Washington niggers”, or “The Washington Kikes”, there’d be an uproar, demonstrations, and questions asked in Congress.  I’m not making this stuff up, white people also recognize the damage the team’s name does to an entire culture.

But to challenge it is to bring up things the United States wants to keep hidden and untold, things as vociferously avoided as Turkey refuses to allow discussion of the Armenian Genocide.  In many ways, Harjo v. Pro-Football Inc would have forced the United States to remember just whose blood was shed, and by whom, as the United States became a country.

Worse, it would have set a precedent for other lawsuits, pending and yet to occur, that are meant to address such things as the Land Trusts, and other broken treaties.

American Indians remain loyal to a country that consistently refuses to be loyal in return.  More American Indians serve in the United States Armed Forces per capita than any other “minority” group.  After Katrina, tribes surrounding the affected areas put into place emergency response teams that were on the ground days before FEMA bothered to show up.

But NDNs aren’t black, NDNs aren’t hispanic, they don’t have the lobbying power of the other minorities, and let’s be honest here – other minorities fighting for “equality” tend to stop fighting the moment they’ve succeeded for themselves alone.

It is said that prejudice is the last refuge of the insignificant.

Refusing to face it is a stain on the record of the highest court in the land.

What it gained in the brave decision to rule in Brown vs Board of Education, it has washed away by sidestepping the question.

That’s a sad reflection on America in the 21st Century.

Shortlink for this post: http://wp.me/p2cbiZ-ai

1. My Post: The Washington Niggers, [↩]
2. My Post: They just don’t get it, do they? [↩]
3. See my previous post, They just don’t get it, do they? [↩]