Adieu Chief Illiniwek

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As the honored symbol of the University of Illinois and the State of Illinois’ most visible representation of its Native heritage, Chief Illiniwek has proudly and majestically represented the University and the State for over 70 years. The Chief Illiniwek Educational Foundation strives to utilize the presence of Chief Illiniwek to promote greater education and awareness of American Indian people, culture, tradition, and history to the students, alumni, and friends of the University of Illinois.

from the Chief Illiniwek Educational Foundation

On the morning of Friday, February 16th, University of Illinois Board chairman Lawrence Eppley announced the end of the racist “Chief Illiniwek” tradition. The “Chief” has served as the symbol and mascot of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for eighty years. In 1989, a grassroots movement began for the complete elimination of the inappropriate tradition and the use of race-based imagery. After a long struggle, both the University’s academic and athletic credentials were challenged for carrying on such a tradition. Most recently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) put the University of a short list of schools who could not host post-season tournaments due to the NCAA’s restrictions on the use of Native American imagery.

from the Progressive Resource / Action Cooperative

Chief Illiniwek is an official symbol of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that has been associated with the University’s intercollegiate athletic programs since the Twenties, and will be retired after a final performance at a Men’s Basketball game on February 21 versus Michigan. The Chief has generally been portrayed by a white student dressed in Native American regalia who performs dances during halftime of Illinois football and basketball games, as well as during women’s volleyball matches (although three students of non white descent, Mike Gonzalez, and Johnny Saputo who are Latino and Steve Raquel who is of Filipino descent have also portrayed Illiniwek).

from Wikipedia, on February 17

I am not sure what could possibly be written about this issue, except maybe to be thankful that the entire thing is over. It has had a freakishly long run for something that ought to have been pretty obvious. I keep thinking of those “Inky Racer” ads that they still sell on Ebay. (You can find an image of one here, thanks to Miscellany.com.)

The “Chief” came from the same noble-savage milieu that brought us the Boy Scouts, eugenics, and eventually the S.A.T. Personally, I saw the “Chief” perform once in person and calling his “traditional dance” weird is an understatement. The S.A.T. is on its last legs (yet standardized testing and its residual Eugenics has its own strange longevity), the Boy Scouts are homophobic, but at least the Chief will retire this week.

I have to say, though, the range of rhetoric generated in this debate is fascinating, from the banal education timber of the Foundation, to the collegiate left-righteousness of the Cooperative, to the bland neutrality of the sure-to-be-contentious Wikipedia article. And, of course, the story was apparently broken by a blog called IlliniPundit.com.

Posted in: Composition, Language, Online Places

WordIQ.com: A Dream of Dogs

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Interpretation: A dream of dogs is usually a fairly good omen. A dog barking happily shows that you will have a pleasing social life. A friendly, happy dog shows that you have lots of good friends. A dog barking and snarling fiercely at you shows you have some unfriendly friends, and also, if the dream dog is big and powerful, as well as friendly, shows that you have a very powerful protector.

The above is the first result of doing a search on WordIQ.com for “dog” and then clicking on the “Dreams” tab. Other tabs include “Search,” “Definitions,” “Ebooks,” “Reference,” “Articles,” and “The Web.” The “Definitions” tab results range form British TV shows (“Dog Eat Dog”) to “Gun Dog.” This might be the Google of the future, or at least an etymologist’s dream. I wasn’t dreaming of dogs, but I was thinking about my dog’s dreams.

Or, really, her thoughts as we walked around the neighborhood this morning. It was so frozen and cold that the sidewalks had not been cleared in most places, and my face felt as if it might be on the verge of a wind burn. But Bear was hardly affected by the temperature at all. As we walked, she seemed to be looking up though the trees at the ice and then the sky beyond. I think she was happy.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Language, Online Places, Writing

Health Care and the Campaign

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Edwards Takes the Lead on Health Care

John Edwards jumped ahead of the other designated major candidates in proposing a detailed plan to get to universal coverage. (Representative Dennis Kucinich has put forward a universal Medicare plan, but the media have largely opted to ignore his candidacy.)

This is a serious plan. What I find most interesting (agreeing with Paul Krugman) is the proposal to create a public Medicare type system that any individual or employer can buy into. [Cheap political advice for the Edwards campaign: hype this item to the moon as a small business friendly proposal. Small businesses hate to deal with insurers who can raise their premiums by ridiculous amounts, especially if one of their workers develops a serious illness.] This sets up a head to head competition between the public system and private insurers. We should all benefit from this sort of competition.

–Dean Baker, American Prospect

I wanted to include this because I am feeling cautiously hopeful that, whatever else might happen, the next presidential cycle may well put single payer health care back on the national agenda. We are arguably about three or four decades behind the rest of the industrialized world on this issue, and the range of parties who would benefit ranges from the very poorest to the largest corporations.

So you would think that this is a no-brainier for both Republican and Democrat. One problem is that the idea of a single payer plan counters the myth of the efficiency of the private sector. “Streamlining payment though a single nonprofit payer,” Physicians for a National Health Program has notes, “would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.”

What’s creepy, of course, is that the current neo-conservative brand of Republican seems too utterly disconnected from economic and social reality to get this, as the recent budget proposal indicates. “A consensus is developing among politically and ideologically diverse organizations and policymakers that all children should have health coverage,” writes Dave Lemmon of Families USA. “Not only is the President clearly out of step, but he is heading in the wrong direction.” Senators Clinton and O’Bama take note.

Posted in: Economics, Online Places, Writing