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Sorry to jump in on your board, but I couldn't resist!
My university's mascot is pretty inoffensive (a wildcat), but the mascot of my high school was the Indian. Nothing much was said about it except for a blip several years ago when a couple people pointed out that the mascot name could be considered racist to some and proposed that we change it. (Bear in mind, the person who wears our mascot outfit had to wear the stereotypical Indian gear--feather headdress, war paint, etc.) Of course nothing changed because many people didn't see anything wrong with it, but I did (although I didn't make a big deal about it because it would have been all for nothing). Indians (the Native American kind) are just like any other racial group, so why should they be picked on when we wouldn't even dream of having a "Chink" or "African" mascot? I blame the idiots who chose that mascot in the first place after all the county's high school merged way back in the day--they could have chosen to be the Eagles, the Hornets, or the Trojans (which were the mascots of the other high schools), so I just wonder why the heck they chose to be called the Indians. Not only is it offensive, it's not very original, either.
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