The Fighting Frogs beat the Coachella Valley Arabs any day

The mascot at my high school, Roosevelt High (named for Theodore; it was built well before Franklin was president, and has been renamed Early Collehe High) in Yonkers, N.Y., was the Indian. And in those days of little or no ethnic sensitivity, students adorned the halls before football games with posters showing cartoon Native Americans with arrows that dripped blood, with mottoes along the lines of “Scalp Them, Indians!”

I’m glad to see that the school’s mascot has changed since then, to the Sharks, though it might not be a particularly original or even appropriate name. Unless the lower Hudson River is harboring sharks, the high school’s fish are probably the only ones in all of Yonkers. And they’d better watch out: The bloodthirsty imagery of sharks is under attack these days by environmentalists because sharks themselves are under attack, with tens of millions killed each year just for their fins. It’s hard to find an innocuous and accurate icon of savagery these days.

In my current town, Laguna Beach, the high school changed its mascot from the Artists 11 years ago, even though no painter in town ever objected to it. There were allegations that the then-principal had fixed the vote to drop Artists in favor of Breakers, a less original if also somewhat more aggressive-sounding name. Artists always seemed like a great mascot to me: unique, as far as anyone knew, humorous and showing courage of spirit. It takes moxie to go out on a football field with that name.

By this point, the Artists don’t seem to be missed anymore.

The emotion invested in defending problematic old mascots — which usually crops up when Native Americans object to the kind of negative stereotyping that the Roosevelt Indians projected in my day — generally seems overwrought. Traditions have meaning, yes, but only when they’re actually meaningful — though I’d certainly feel pangs of loss should the Ribet Academy in Los Angeles ever change its mascot from the perfectly named Fighting Frogs.

Ten or 20 years from now, practically no one will mind a change of name from something that wasn’t particularly inventive or fitting in the first place. How many people care, or even remember, that the Stanford team used to be the Indians as well; now it’s the Cardinal. Singular. As in the color.

The latest mascot dispute is at Coachella Valley High School, where the mascot is the Arab, depicted in pure caricature complete with hooked nose. Beyond that, he sports a threatening snarl and grim, hooded eyes. Some drawings include large swords drawn below the face. At games, a belly dancer gyrates around a costumed mascot.

The Arab mascot dates to the 1920s, a more naive time when Arabs were, to most Americans, exotic curiosities. OPEC wasn’t an issue. There was no Arab-Israeli conflict; there was no Israel. Obviously, no harm was meant. But it would be charitable to say that this is now outdated. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has asked for the mascot to be withdrawn.

Ethnic sensitivity can be overdone. Recently, I wrote about the silliness of a couple of groups that objected to kimonos as a Halloween costume. They actually succeeded in getting Pottery Barn to withdraw its kimono and sushi chef costumes from its website.

But this is a different matter. It plays into very negative stereotypes concerning a group that continually is the target of nasty prejudices.

Defenders say the Arab seems like an appropriate image for a desert environment that produces dates. But there’s nothing about demeaning caricatures that’s appropriate for a public high school. (And I’m not sure the Coachella Valley High Burning Men would make an acceptable substitute.)

Pick your own favorite mascot. And if you happen to have any good ideas for Coachella Valley High, now would be the time.

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