Racism is a serious problem at Dartmouth, and racially motivated incidents will continue to occur until the Dartmouth community challenges that racism. Usually, those racist attitudes are difficult to see because they occur primarily as an undercurrent beneath our everyday interactions. But when they manifest as concrete incidents, these events are an opportunity for us to see more clearly the prejudices that we still subscribe to- and to do something about them.

The Psi Upsilon fraternity incident in late February was one of these events. What happened at Psi U is important not just for the actual incident, but also for what it reveals about some of the underlying attitudes on our campus. It has sparked a great deal of discussion in many quarters about Dartmouth’s problems with racial, cultural, and sexual insensitivity.

A common response among students, and one that the community has not adequately addressed, is a lack of understanding about why the incident is racially and culturally insensitive. Many believe that yelling "Scalp ‘em!" is not necessarily a racial and cultural slur. The harm of doing so is not immediately evident to them and they are too embarrassed to ask why it is offensive.

For many, "Scalp ‘em" is just an innocuous old football cheer. It is a matter of school pride, not of wanting to offend someone. Some also claim that naming the Dartmouth mascot the "Indian" is a compliment, arguing that Indians are courageous warriors and should feel honored. The fact that other sports teams have Indian-esque mascots (like the Atlanta Braves, the Cleveland Indians, and yes, the Washington Redskins) shows us that these beliefs are widely accepted and harmless. Unfortunately, this is a case in which conventional wisdom does not quite have it right.

Conventional wisdom is, to put it mildly, fallible. For anyone who needs convincing, fifty-five years ago, it was widely accepted in the United States that minorities should sit separately from whites on buses and for them to attend separate schools. The seats and schools were supposedly just as good, and it was considered a matter of comfort for all involved – so what was the harm?

Today, even though most of us acknowledge that segregation is wrong and harmful, it is apparently far less clear what, exactly, is harmful about the cheer and ultimately about the Indian mascot. The short answer is that they are caricatures and misrepresentations that many of us do not fully understand as such. There are two specific ways in which racial caricatures (or stereotypes) can be harmful. One is when the image itself is negativeÓfor instance the stereotype of the "greedy Jew." The second is intrinsic to caricature and the way it distorts how individuals are viewed. The Dartmouth Indian mascot, perhaps meant to be complimentary, is harmful because it still creates a view of Native Americans that simply is not. Yet many of us take this ideal to be in some way accurate because we do not have enough real-life interaction with Native American students to know better.

Mascot supporters often argue that the mascot is a symbol of respect when used in a "dignified" manner. They argue that it is symbol of heritage. But how can it be respectful for one group of people to use another group of people as a mascot without their consent? Dartmouth’s Native American students have always spoken out strongly against the mascot. Is it really respectful or dignified to continue (albeit unofficially) forcing the mascot upon them?

Of course all of us could support a truly dignified symbol that was representative of Native Americans as they really wish to portray themselves. But it is questionable whether there is such a thing as a dignified caricature. Is a white male dressed in a headdress with painted cheeks, a bared chest, bare feet and riding a horse really a "dignified" representation? There is a distinction to be made between Native American students dressing in traditional costume and performing an act of heritage and non-Indian students masquerading as Indians. The latter uncomfortably recalls white actors’ use of blackface to caricature blacks in Vaudeville theatre.

Consent is crucially important. Notre Dame University uses the Fighting Irish mascot because the school was founded by Irish priests, and the subject of their mascot – the Irish – was chosen by Irish administrators and students. There are schools in Native American communities that use the "Braves" or the "Warriors" as their mascots – but those are used based on the consent of the school’s Native American students.

There is a clear qualitative distinction between a school, comprised primarily of Native American students, choosing for itself a "Warriors" mascot and a school, comprised primarily of non-Native American students, choosing an "Indian" mascot over the protests of its Native American students.

Aside from the problem of consent, there are other reasons why the Indian mascot is neither respectful nor dignified. For example, even if, as supporters of the Indian mascot consistently claim, Dartmouth used the Indian symbol in a dignified and respectful way, its use makes Native Americans targets of disrespectful and racist treatment from outside the Dartmouth community. The repulsive image on the cover of this issue originated from the football rivalry between Dartmouth and Harvard. Is it less hurtful because Dartmouth was only indirectly responsible for the attack? Such abuse is bound to occur when a cultural symbol enters the competitive arena.

Outside of that arena, use of the mascot creates distortion in the way we ultimately view Native Americans as individuals and in how Native Americans view themselves. This example may help clarify. People assume that I know karate, I am smart and I am talented at math because I am Asian American.

What is the harm in all this? These representations are not necessarily negative and they are not usually invoked out of desire to hurt. Yet there is harm in them. I am not a karate expert, I do not have slanted eyes, I do not like math just because I am Asian American. I may do or have all of these things, but if I did, it would not be solely because of my ethnicity or culture. In the same way, when we look at the Dartmouth Indian mascot, what we see is no more Indian than a picture of someone with slanted eyes is necessarily Asian or an Amos and Andy doll is black. If a Native American is courageous or strong or can ride a horse, that is a function of who she is as an individual rather than of her being Native American. In these ways, the mascot, the slogan and the faulty perceptions they perpetuate devalue the humanity and uniqueness of individuals within a given group.

Given the harms of the Dartmouth mascot, it is clear that the "Indian" should be retired not just from official use, but also from unofficial use. Dartmouth students with Native American backgrounds do, overwhelmingly, continue to disapprove of the Indian mascot. Why do so many of us continue to doubt their word that the mascot really is offensive? Why do we continue to insist that the mascot and Indian cheers are "dignified," "respectful" and "harmless?"