YES vs. NO

We honor the Seminole legend

Response of FSU President Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte (abridged)

Your column on the political offensiveness of the World Series caught my eye. It is curious that in a column about stereotyping, you were so quick to stereotype Florida State University, our dealings with the Seminole Indians and the academic record and physical conditioning of our athletes.

We are very proud of what this university has done in all these areas. Your column notes that we at Florida State have consistently invited Seminole leaders to our events. Yet, you dismiss that fact as if it were a casual and inconsequential matter. It is not. We have been in constant contact for years with the elected leadership of the Seminole organizations in Florida and Oklahoma.

In Native American matters, tribal sovereignty is important. The elected chiefs of the two tribes have visited us each year and seen how we honor the Seminole legend. We believe that people who truly want to regard the feelings of the Seminoles ought to pay attention to the views of their elected leaders. I am not aware of any complaint by either of these chiefs which we have not addressed.

Chief James E. Billie, chairman of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, endorses Florida State's use of the Seminoles nickname. In a letter in the April 9, 1993, edition of the Seminole Tribune, Chief Billie wrote:

"... I do not have time to participate in such manufactured controversies that serve no purpose whatsoever, than to promote the egos of those few instigators who have assigned themselves the lofty job of telling us Seminoles how we feel."

That opinion may not be univer-sal among the Seminoles, but it is clearly shared by some of the tribe's young leaders as well. For example, at the game against Georgia Tech, ABC interviewed Micki Diaz, Miss Seminole Nation for 1995-96. The reporter asked her about the university's use of the Seminole name. She said:

"Yes, in some aspects it is positive, but in some other people's eyes it's not what they really want. But, in my opinion, I feel that it's promoting our tribe and we're getting more recognized from just this school having the Seminole name... (Some) feel that if we're getting things like (my) crowning the homecoming court, we're behind it -- we're supporting it. It doesn't bother a lot of people, but some it does, but you know there is more positive than negative."

Your column acknowledges that we have always invited Seminoles, including the chiefs, to our games, but the way you phrase it (that FSU "always trots out some real Seminoles") is insulting to the university and tribal leaders. We do not "trot out" anyone. We invite Seminoles, and they often accept. If you are concerned with sensitivity, I would think this would be considered a thoughtful step on our part.

The other slur in your column refers to our "alleged student athletes." I doubt that you took the time to look at the data on our student athletes before that flippant remark. I hope you will now take time to see what our athletes have done.

You can look at their 71-percent graduation rate (for football players), one of the best in the country. Or you can look at the 73-percent graduation rate for all our intercollegiate sports.

You can review the record of athletes like Charlie Ward, or Derrick Brooks and Ken Alexander, two of the most academically recognized athletes in the country. Many FSU students are both fine athletes and good students. Your pretense to sensitivity is belied by your carelessness with facts and your eagerness to insult others. I am disappointed.

No race of people should be a mascot

Reprinted from the New York Times, Oct. 19, 1995 By George Vecsey (abridged)

So now we have the politically incorrect World Series. This series should be about long-suffering Cleveland or long-suffering Atlanta finally winning another World Series.

Instead, this so-called World Series -- another outdated concept -- is going to offend millions of Americans whose roots go back before the Mayflower and all the other ships.

The only way newcomers tend to notice American Indians is from the growth of casinos on tribal lands. I don't list gambling among the top thousand admirable human activities, but I won't demand American Indians stop running gambling joints until Trump and Bally and municipalities do.

My real question is, what do we do about these demeaning nicknames for the next week or 10 days? I cannot twist my sentences enough to refer to "the team from Cleveland" and "the team from Atlanta" but I respect the writers and even entire newspapers that will perform that enlightened act of contortion.

In the raucous clubhouse Tuesday night, perhaps I should have asked thoughtful guys like Kenny Lofton and Sandy Alomar Jr. and Dennis Martinez, all "persons of color," as Americans call anybody not totally Caucasian, what they thought of going to the all-caricature World Series. But at a time like that, who wants to be a poop?

Instead, I ask: How do we feel? We the fans. We the consumers. In Atlanta, not only do they trot out the cartoon image of the Braves, but the fans perform a chant with a chopping motion, which would be idiotic even if it did not have racist implications.

When I see Atlanta fans performing the chop, I want to ask an old liberal from the 1960s what she thinks of stereotypes of American Indians. But Jane Fonda is married to Rich Ted, and she doesn't do protest anymore.

If you stop to think about it, it really is offensive to take a people whose religion, whose love of the land, whose suffering, is intrinsically mixed with race, and turn them into mascots. These conditions go back to earlier times, like the 1948 World Series, when white people didn't have to think about this stuff. But now we do.

Middle-of-the-road America (code phrase for white America) wakes up one morning and discovers, gee, jurors may have been in-fluenced by their own racial identity in the O.J. Simpson trial. How disturbing. Or Middle America discovers, gee, nearly half a million black American men are convening in Washington, and a man named Farrakhan, why, he sounds angry. How disturbing. Then anybody who can afford a ticket goes to the ball park and performs some stupid chop and wears a ball cap with a grinning American Indian on it. The choppers don't get it.

Is it reasonable to ask these two ball clubs to change their names? Universities like Stanford and St. John's actually did, and others have agonized over it. But at Florida State University, Chief Seminole -- bare-chested warrior on horseback, wielding a spear -- leads the football team onto the field. That college always trots out some real Seminoles who say they are not offended by the use of a warrior as a mascot for smash-mouth, roid-rage, beefed-up alleged student-athletes.

Plus, the latter-day George Preston Marshall who currently owns the professional football team in the American capital (named Jack Kent Cooke, what is it with these three-name guys?), isn't about to give up the trappings and income of the Washington Redskins.

There is a glorious heritage in these teams -- Sammy Baugh, Bobby Mitchell, Henry Aaron, Mike Garcia. We won't see these nicknames changed in the short run. But I suggest that fans refrain from buying any souvenir with those degrading symbols. Some marketing executive just might get it.