Activists on the EMU Student Council wanted the school nickname, “Hurons,” changed because it insulted Huron Indians.
My girlfriend’s circle was disgusted. One of her friends (who, if memory serves, was student body president) dug up a Huron “chief” who testified that most Hurons considered it an honor.
No matter. The vote went through, and the EMU Hurons became the EMU Eagles.
The NCAA has followed EMU’s lead, forcing Indian-less names on all NCAA schools, with a few exceptions (like Florida State).
There are many arguments against this bizarre form of aggression. For starters, it doesn’t take into account that most Native Americans either like the Indian nicknames or couldn’t care less. Some tribes, like the North Dakota Sioux, are split on the issue. Why should one preference beat the other?
The names are also an honor. They’re meant to connote strength. As one writer said last week, “[N]o football team ever has, or ever will, name itself the Actuaries, the Family Doctors, the Composers, or the Compassionate Nuns.”
We also shouldn’t forget that the tribes are sovereign nations (how else do you think they can have casinos?). As that same writer also pointed out, “Their complaining about the ‘Washington Redskins’ is akin to our complaining about a Botswanian soccer team calling themselves the 'Ugly Americans' (or, more fittingly, the 'Cowboys').”
But what should we, as Christians, think about all this? We are, after all, called upon to be loving and tolerant. Despite the cogent arguments presented above, shouldn’t we support the nickname ban, since it’s an act of kindness and respect toward our neighbor?
No.
We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. This means, as C.S. Lewis pointed out in Mere Christianity, we should judge our neighbors’ actions as we judge our own, and, just as it is acceptable to dislike one’s “own cowardice or conceit or greed,” it is acceptable to dislike a few Indians’ and activists’ pettiness and misplaced sensitivity.
Furthermore, as Christians, we can make the decision that they are being petty and wrongly sensitive. We believe in objective norms of human behavior that emanate from human nature: creatures made by God for a life of love and service, not of squabbling and agitation. We also know that hateful emotions and complaining dispositions are debased mental frameworks that ought not be respected.
Of course, there is also a subjective side to each person, that inner state that makes it impossible for us to judge our neighbor. But that’s no reason to honor the pettiness. We love the complainer (the sinner) because we can’t judge his or her subjective state, but we’re called upon to hate the pettiness (the sin) because objectively we can judge it as petty.
And I mean it when I say “hate.” We are called (don’t faint, delicate readers) to hate. As Edmund Burke once observed, those who fail to hate where they ought to hate cannot love where they ought to love. Though I don’t suggest that we let hateful thoughts override our loving thoughts (wise men from Marcus Aurelius to St. Francis de Sales suggest that we keep pleasant or loving thoughts in front of us at all times), we can’t let vague, half-baked notions of tolerance and love override sound criticism of unbecoming behavior.
It’s also worth noting that the NCAA’s actions aren’t charitable in any way. Charity must be voluntary and self-giving. If it lacks either of those components, it’s not charity. If it’s self-giving on your part but not voluntary, it’s a type of taxation against you. If it’s voluntary on your part but not self-giving, it means someone else must do your good works. Either way, there is force or coercion involved, which is the antithesis of charity.
That’s one of the reasons that the Catholic Church has always opposed socialism. Socialism’s idea of everyone sharing everything drips of charity, but if not done voluntarily, such sharing is not charitable at all. Indeed, because such sharing always requires coercion, it will result in tyranny, as we witnessed firsthand from 1917 to 1991.
And this brings us back to the NCAA, a governing body that has been acting with increasing arbitrariness and caprice. It would be gross melodramatics to refer to the NCAA as a Communist dictatorship, but in its arbitrary and capricious actions, it is displaying tyrannical pretensions.
And good Christians always oppose tyranny and pretension.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Daily Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
