Last night, we went over to a friend's house for a birthday party. Sitting at dinner, the topic of our local high school changing its name and nickname came up in conversation. The school went from the Serra Conquistadors to the Canyon Hills Rattlesnakes.
They used to be named for a Catholic dude who left a life of luxury on the coast of Spain to come to the Americas and bring salvation and civilization to a paleolithic people. Now they're named for a contradictory geographical feature and a poisonous reptile. The state of the modern education industry is such that you could hardly expect anything better. I'm just happy the snake isn't a sexually degenerate snake. Yet.
Anywho, the people at the table said the name Conquistadors was kind of offensive. I asked, "Compared to what? Compared to a civilization that slaughtered people by the tens of thousands by carving out their internal organs while they were still alive?"
"Hmm. Well, no, I guess, not really," was the reply. Mind you all of this was discussed while we were laughing. None of it got contentious.
Someone at the table talked about their alma mater in Arizona. Their nickname was the Chieftains. She said that it always made her uncomfortable that the mascot was played by a white, Mormon boy. It didn't really hit me what was wrong with that statement until this morning, but I did manage to get out, "Yeah, it's too bad he didn't have Aztec blood in him." In a pretend conversational injection, I said, "You know, his grandfather was a member of the SS, so when you think about it, he actually fits the part perfectly!"
Now, in retrospect, I wish I'd let fly with this rant.
"Yeah, nothing says authentic quite like having the descendant of slave-holding mass-murderers put on his Levis, his cotton t-shirt made in Malaysia and his Nikes made in China, get in his Buick, gas it up at Exxon and drive on paved roads to a football stadium made of concrete and steel to put on a costume made of plastic and nylon to dance around at halftime at a game the Indians couldn't have comprehended, much less invented for themselves, even if you gave them another 10,000 years."
But that's really the problem, isn't it? Authenticity in the USA of 2022 is strictly racial. I don't blame my friends one bit for this. We all swim around in this same Hitlerian sewer. Uncle Adolf saw things the exact same way. It mattered not at all that his precious Aryans owed an immeasurable mountain of debt to the Jews for their contributions to learning and civilization. All that mattered was race.
Kind of like our team mascots today.
4 comments:
The school was called the "Serra Conquistadors" but is now called the "Canyon Hills Rattlesnakes"??
Ilion - You got it. If it doesn't make sense to you, you are not alone. They made the change with essentially no feedback or warning (and they are still under a lawsuit for violations of the Brown Act). In the interest of full disclosure the name change did start with a "student led petition". But a poll showed that students were against the name change 57% to 43%, and that alumni were almost 2 to 1 against. So really the change happened because of a vocal minority of wokeness. Cancel culture and illogic (but I repeat myself) wins again.
My question was asking whether KT had meant to sat that the sports team(s) were called the "Serra Conquistadors" but are now called the "Canyon Hills Rattlesnakes".
Yes. That is exactly correct. They went from brown and yellow (classic SD Padres colors and the brown of course is a nod to the priests robes) to red and black (which appear to be nods to absolutely nothing related to rattlesnakes).
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