The governor’s commission on the use of Indian mascots and imagery in public schools .
It doesn’t pound the table or denounce certain schools, and it doesn’t even urge lawmakers to outlaw offensive names and images. Quite the contrary. The report specifically “recognizes and respects local control by elected boards of education.”
But the commission also rightly, and strongly, urges communities to get rid of derogatory and offensive Indian mascots, names and imagery — such as Savages. And it also makes a powerful case that schools that want to retain names like Indians or Warriors (the vast majority of such schools) “enter into formal relationships with federally recognized tribes” — and recounts how Strasburg High School recently followed this path.
This is not political correctness run amuck. It’s cultural sensitivity whose time has come.
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