Redneck Nation (17 page)

The only right every American enjoys today is the right to be as stupid as he wants to be and still be taken seriously by
his neighbors. If that’s not a Redneck Nation, I don’t know what is.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments
are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

As I mentioned earlier, these words, from the Declaration of Independence, have been declared “exclusionary and insensitive”
by the New Jersey Senate. The attack against a bill requiring schoolchildren to recite this part of the Declaration was led
by Senator Wayne Bryant, who labeled it “offensive to [the black] community.” “You have the nerve to ask my grandchildren
to recite these words?” he said on the floor of the Senate. “How dare you?”

How this language is exclusionary today, Senator Bryant never explained. He was never asked to explain. He’s learned the key
rule of the Redneck Nation: never explain.
Just announce that your opponents will never understand.

If the phrase “all men are created equal” is offensive today because it once excluded blacks (and women and non-property owners
and people under twenty-one, for that matter), then isn’t the term “human being” also exclusionary? After all, there were
people who once considered Africans less than human. The prevailing view in America once was that slaves were merely property.
Should every mention of the word “property” in the U.S. Constitution be stricken?

We could all pretend that the Declaration was, in fact, a racist document and that these words are racist on their face. In
order to take Senator Bryant seriously, we would have to. And a majority of his fellow state senators, much to their discredit,
did.

But instead of pretending to believe this sheer, utter nonsense, wouldn’t it be easier for a rational person to just stand
up and point out that this man is an idiot? That what he’s saying is clear and demonstrably untrue?

Ah, but that’s the problem. In our modern, multicultural America, it’s enough that his opinions are true to him. And really,
who are we to judge? Does it matter that these words from the Declaration of Independence aren’t actually offensive? Isn’t
it more important that some people
think
they’re offensive?

As any solid citizen of the old, segregated South would have told you, it’s completely possible for a word or phrase to be
offensive to one group and not to another. So take your damn “Freedom Now!” placards and get back on the bus, Yankee!

For Confederate-style multiculturalists, there is no obligation
for any group to explain the reasonableness of its actions or attitudes to any other. Consider again the ongoing fight over
Indian mascots for sports teams. That poll of American Indians by
Sports Illustrated
showed that more than 80 percent were not offended by Indian mascots or team names. Surprising to me, more than 60 percent
weren’t even bothered by the “Redskins” nickname.

This is interesting because you don’t have to be a descendant of Geronimo or Sacagawea to find the Washington “Redskins” offensive.
Reasonable people articulate and understand why a team name that appears frequently in movie dialogue accompanied by the modifier
“them dirty” might be inappropriate for public use.

So when a group of Native American activists stands up and says, “Calling a team ‘Redskins,’ which has frequently been used
as a racial slur, is unacceptable,” I can understand their point—a viewpoint I share, by the way. It’s rational and comprehensible
to anyone. But when folks like Richard Regan of the Maryland Commission for Indian Affairs announce that all Indian mascots—Braves,
Seminoles, Warriors, etc.—are offensive, they are uttering nonsense.

Regan, a proud Lumbee Indian from North Carolina, fled his political failures back home to become a leader of Native American
causes in the People’s Republic of Maryland—a state with virtually no Indians. He has declared community sports leagues like
youth soccer and Little League baseball “a hate growth market” because they allow Indian team names. When a school district
in Havre de Grace, Maryland, refused to change its team name from the “Warriors,” Regan told the
Baltimore Sun
, “I think it’s a sad day when the public school system has more in common
with the Ku Klux Klan than an advocacy group representing Maryland’s American Indians.”

Lynching black people, blowing up churches, putting a bow and arrow on your basketball jersey—to multiculturalists like Regan,
it’s all the same. What’s bizarre is that Regan and his allies have never answered the first, fundamental question: What’s
offensive about a group of kids who want to associate themselves with Indian culture?

Well, my fellow white people, the secret is out. I might as well confess right now. Yes, Richard Regan, you’re right: The
reason that Boy Scout troops and baseball teams choose mascots is that they’re looking for someone to insult. You’ve been
right all along. The reason multimillion-dollar university sports programs choose mascots like Irishmen or Celts or Vikings
or Aztecs is to sow hatred and show solidarity with the Klan.

Why, whenever four-time Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Greg Maddux pitches another shutout for the Atlanta Br—uh, you-know-whos,
wearing a Native American warrior name on his chest, you can practically hear the cries of humiliation from the Great Tribal
Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in the Sky. Oh, the anguish! Oh, the shame! All those talented athletes—white, black, and Hispanic—calling
themselves “Indians” or “Warriors” and “Illini,” wearing uniforms and logos with traditional symbols of Native American culture
as they appear on national TV before millions of cheering fans. I mean, it’s not like people look up to athletes in America
these days. My God, it’s got to be incredibly humiliating.

Which probably explains why the NAACP’s favorite college mascot is the Rebel of Ole Miss.

Your heart has to go out to the poor Confederate loyalists,
mocked every football Saturday by a stadium filled with Confederate flags. There, on the field, all those black players (except
the lily-white QB, of course) calling themselves “Rebels,” while some guy pretending to be a Confederate officer mocks and
demeans the sacrifices of their southern ancestors. There are even historically inaccurate and culturally insensitive attempts
to sound the infamous rebel yell. Oh, the shame must be almost too much to bear.

Why, the ongoing insult to Confederate heritage at the University of Mississippi is so complete, I’m left to assume the entire
enterprise is an outlandishly clever conspiracy organized and conducted by vengeful black Mississippians from a secret headquarters
deep in the Delta.

And if black Mississippians ever came to a Rebels football game, I’d ask them about it…

To think otherwise is to think that schools, clubs, and organizations choose mascots and team names from cultures and people
they want to honor and emulate. To think otherwise, you must believe that athletes and fans want to be associated with Braves,
Warriors, and Indians because Braves, Warriors, and Indians represent, in their minds, virtues they hope to attain, like courage,
strength, and cunning.

To think otherwise, you must think that the Richard Regans and Indian-rights activists of the world are total and utter dopes.

It might, however, explain the fate of the Fightin’ Whiteys, an intramural basketball team started in 2002 by Solomon Little
Owl at the University of Northern Colorado. Upset by the lukewarm response to his protests over Indian sports mascots, Little
Owl decided to turn the tables: He named his team the Fightin’ Whites (though the players
called themselves the “Whiteys”), complete with a geeky white-boy mascot. Their slogan: “Everythang’s Gonna Be All White!”

“The message is, let’s do something that will let people see the other side of what it’s like to be a mascot,” Little Owl
said. “I am really offended by this mascot issue.”

Unfortunately the “other side”—that is, the white people of Colorado—refused to be offended. In fact, they seemed to be… flattered.
“I think it’s great!” said one white e-mailer who contacted Little Owl’s team. T-shirt sales surged. Rush Limbaugh talked
about them on the air. When the date arrived for their first intramural game, more than half the crowd were members of the
media.

The Fightin’ Whites got trounced, by the way. Apparently Little Owl’s multiethnic basketball team even
played
like white guys.

And still the Indian activists complain. The poor kids at Maryland’s Poolesville High lost fifty years of tradition when the
county school board forced them to bench the “Indians.” The students, teachers, and parents voted overwhelmingly to keep the
team name, but the elected school board members shot them down. “This is not a democracy,” one school board member allegedly
told a Poolesville supporter.

Well, not in Montgomery County, Maryland, anyway…

Some Poolesville folks asked me at the time what I thought their new mascot should be. I insisted that they follow the dictates
of the multiculturalists. Poolesville needed a mascot that was not specific to any ethnic or racial group, and would be popular
among high schoolers and promote good values. I made these suggestions:

• The Poolesville Scalpers. Young people should be encouraged to learn about the free market, and the go-getters who snag tickets
  to popular concerts and sporting events and resell them at a significant profit are the perfect role model. The mascot could
  be a guy standing outside a stadium, holding up some tickets, and shouting, “Got two! Got two!”
  
• The Medicine Men. Academic excellence is important, too. Why not honor those students who plan to major in premed when they
  go to college? Such a mascot would inspire these high schoolers to a higher calling. (For female squads, the obvious choice
  is “Medicine Women,” though the Poolesville “Earth Mothers” or “Juju Women” might also be popular.)
  
• The Firewater. Sensitivity to stereotypes has encouraged many sports teams to choose abstract concepts and inanimate objects
  as names. Along with “the Heat,” “the Flame,” “the Storm,” and “the Liberty,” “the Firewater” would be completely inoffensive,
  and it might also spur interest in the team from New Age types.
  

But the best choice for a new mascot, in my humble opinion, would be the Poolesville High Engines. Young people love cars.
They love rockets, jets, anything with an engine that goes fast. Why, just look at the success of the film
The Fast and the Furious
. What could be more inspiring for a sports team than to be known as the “Red Hot Engines” of Poolesville High?

The “Red Engines” for short.

The internal combustion engine has its critics, however, and nothing will ruin a school pep rally faster than a
protest led by Al Gore—with or without the beard. Therefore, I proposed the mascot be a steam engine, say a locomotive. Powerful,
fast, and relatively environmentally friendly, this would be the perfect, nonethnic, nonoffensive sports team name.

Just imagine this scene at the next Poolesville High football game:

The Poolesville High football team, dressed in red, waits to take the field. From the stands comes the chant “Engines! Engines!
Engines! G-o-o-o-o Engines!” Can you hear it? Then frenzied fans join in the “Engine Dance,” a cheer in which fans imitate
the piston motion of a steam engine by extending their arms forward and chopping them up and down, all the while wailing “Whooo!
Whoo-whoo!” Then, as the band sends up puffs of steam (or, more likely, smoke) to signal the team, the Engines race onto the
field!

From the Indians to the Engines: finally, a high school mascot that sends a real message. I wonder if the activists will ever
get it?

Advocates of multiculturalism will reject the above examples as fringe, as though I’m overlooking the “good” aspects of having
a respect for the beliefs of other cultures. But by co-opting the southern philosophy of “exceptionalism”—what I believe and
how I behave need not meet any rational standards but should just be accepted without judgment—multiculturalists have gone
from merely laughable to possibly dangerous. There is, for example, a theory
about black culture which states that young African American men do not have the ability to understand or obey the law. And
because of this cultural heritage, black people should be treated differently in court than white people.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s a racist sentiment that every white Southerner has heard expressed at one time or
another.

I know I was taken aback when I ran across this theory in the
Cincinnati Enquirer
. The defendant in question was a young black man. The person making the argument that he was culturally incapable of discerning
right from wrong: his attorney.

The lawyer, Victor Sims, was representing one of three young black defendants found guilty of looting a local department store
of $131,000 in easily transportable goods during the April 2001 riots. After hearing his view of race and character, I began
to suspect that he was being financed by the Aryan Nations legal fund.

Pleading for a light sentence, Sims first argued that his client was racially entitled to loot whatever he wanted because
it was a department store with a large black clientele. As the
Enquirer
reported it: “Sims contended that… Deveroes [the looted department store] shouldn’t complain too much because the store benefited
from those living in that community. ‘It’s been the black community and these young boys,’ Sims said pointing to the defendants,
‘that has kept them in business.’”

This is an interesting view of property rights, and no doubt Sims believes that Cincinnati’s suburban hausfraus would be completely
within their rights to loot SUV’s from nearby dealerships during the next period of social unrest. Sims then went on to offer
an even more disturbing reason
why his client should be spared: “It’s not their fault. They wouldn’t be running the streets at 2
A.M
. if they had opportunities or if government programs weren’t killed by budget cuts. We make a different inference for these
young black men than we do for better economically situated white males.” Sims said.