This is regarding “Illiniwek fight gets a twist; Tribal official says he has headdress Sioux want back” (Metro, Jan. 21). Let me turn around the resolution that the Sioux presented with: “The antics of people playing the Notre Dame leprechaun perpetuate a degrading racial stereotype that reflects negatively on all Irish-American people.”
My question to the NCAA is: Are Native Americans the only people who are allowed to be offended? As an Irish-American Catholic and citizen of both the U.S. and the Republic of Ireland, I take offense at Notre Dame’s portrayals of my race, heritage, creed and culture, through the use of its moniker “Fighting Irish.”
In this age of ultra political correctness, the NCAA should do the right thing and cease its own hypocrisy. If Florida State’s Chief Osceola is deemed to be non-offensive, then how can one possibly rationalize that Chief Illiniwek is hostile and abusive? Logic only dictates that if one Indian chief is approved, then all should be allowed. Indeed it is unfathomable to think that the University of North Dakota’s name, Fighting Sioux, is offensive and, yet, in the eyes of the NCAA, that the University of Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish is not.
