In Living Color: Men on Sports

A lot goes on in this video. There are stereotypes being fulfilled and challenged on many levels. Not only is this skit important to look at on the planes of race, gender and sexuality, but also in terms of connections and cross over points between Native Americans and Blacks in the US. Native American groups have been fighting for a long time to eliminate racist mascots across the country. In the early 1990s, when this sketch was filmed, “individuals and organizations, from high school students and teachers to the American Indian Movement and the American Anthropological Association” were winning key fights in the end to such mascot culture. In 2002 though, King wrote, “it is likely that controversy over mascots will persist given that the public still embraces them as unproblematic” (350). This skit, similar to Key and Peele’s Power Falcons, plays into mainstream stereotypes about Native Americans. This clip does not do much to challenge stereotypes about anything so I suppose it is not too surprising that it perpetuates Native American stereotypes as well, but it is still worth noting. In Johnson’s “Manifest Faggotry,” he analyzes this piece looking specifically at the dynamics of race, gender and sexuality but makes no mention of the comments about Native Americans. This is especially surprising given Johnson’s other work focusing on the need in academia to breach subjects commonly overlooking in order to “[emancipate] pedagogy” (Black Performance Studies, 448). This sort of silencing of Native American injustices by black voices is present in many questions of culturally appropriating mascots and sports culture in America (King).

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