Guest Column

A Golden Moment

By Robert Miranda
May 9, 2005

You’ve got to love the reaction on the faces of these Marquette students that was plastered on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Gold: Pan it or dig it, May 4, 2005). After the announcement by Marquette University president, Father Robert A. Wild of the school’s name change to GOLD, the pro-Warrior advocates stood there perplexed and dumbfounded.

I particularly love the reaction of the young man in the baseball cap behind the flabbergasted guy with his hands on his hips, next to the student who appears to have had a premonition and was already dressed like a gold nugget. Talk about a “Kodak moment”.

The smiling young man with the baseball cap leaves me with the impression of his satisfaction that poetic justice was handed to the insensitive reactionary actions of a few who simply ignored the concerns of American Indians. Many American Indians expressed deep contempt for any attempt to rename Marquette’s teams, Warriors.

Indeed, this young man seems to understand very well the offensive connotation the name Warriors has with Native Americans. His laugh is a bright spot in an otherwise sorry episode of racism that still permeates in our society.

It’s sad that there are still Anglo people out there who don’t get it. Fueled by the idiotic mantra of Milwaukee’s biggest and well-known bigot, Mark Belling, some Anglos seem to just have this need to spit in the eye of decency and ignore the minority of this land.

Yes, the Bellingnistas are up in arms because the Jesuits at Marquette University made a decision intended to promote harmony and to end the divisive debate that has festered at Marquette over the name of the school mascot.

Nevertheless, to appear not to be taking a side, MU's Board of Trustees stepped into political quicksand and now find themselves in the midst of a growing ruckus after selecting the new nickname, Gold.

In short, MU’s board should have just left well enough alone.

Native Americans all across this state have been struggling to rid schools of names that are offensive to native people. Belling says a small group of “Indians” strong armed Marquette officials. The Bellingnistas say that the Warrior name is intended to be respectful of Indian heritage. The reality is far from what Belling and the Bellingnistas espouse. Willie Wampum, as the school's mascot was called until the early 1970s, was a foolish looking Indian. Marquette abandoned the name Warrior in 1993, recognizing the disrespect the name represented to American Indians.

But in the last few years the Bellingnistas marched forward with their campaign to have Marquette return the name Warriors. They ignore the fact that American Indians have expressed historically that the use of the name Warriors promotes Indian stereotypes and is profoundly insulting to the American Indian community. But Belling and the Bellingnistas don’t care. To them, the matter has more to do about political correctness than it does recognizing the need to be responsive to the concerns of the minority.

All the same, MU has given the Bellingnistas reason to be even more vocal and confrontational. An example of that confrontation was the disrespectful way Marquette students treated MU president, Father Robert A. Wild during a recent student protest of the decision to name Marquette Gold.

Following the example of their name sake, the Bellingnistas shouted down the Jesuit as he attempted to speak to the students regarding the decision. Clearly, this disrespectful behavior is being spurred on by the rants of right –wing radio commentators. But this rather insulting action against the good father only illustrates the hypocrisy of conservative notions that they are good Christians who love and respect all things.

So let’s cherish the golden moment affixed forever in that picture and rejoice as did that student. Seldom does justice come so poetically.
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-- Miranda is a national award-winning columnist, Latino community activist and columnist for the Milwaukee Spanish Journal

Article at: http://wisopinion.com/index.iml?mdl=article.mdl&article=1894
Photos at: http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/sports/mu/img/may05/students504.jpg

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