Letter to the Editor
Foster's Daily Democrat
Thursday, August 24, 2006

A 'limited capacity for reason'

To the editor:

By engaging in rabid personal attacks and offering nothing more than his muddled opinions, Arnold Bennett has again demonstrated his limited capacity for reason. Such traits are not unique to Bennett but are common in those of his stripe who champion ethnic stereotyping in publicly funded schools through the outdated use of "Indian" sports team tokens.

In his nearly incomprehensible 8/24/06 letter to this publication, Bennett's unoriginal tirade was not only filled with many blatant fabrications and tortured conclusions but descended into a level of delusional fantasy that bordered on the bizarre. Yet other than sharing his flimsy hearsay and blurry views, Bennett failed to submit one shred of substantive proof to bolster his claims. Bennett's own words have dismissed him as someone to be taken seriously.

In contrast, here are a few facts that anyone with an open mind and a desire for the
truth can confirm.

• The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is the oldest, largest, and most representative of all American Indian advocacy groups. As recently as 2005, the NCAI officially repeated its unambiguous support for retiring "Indian" sports team tokens such as that used by Rochester and favored by Bennett.
• In 2002, the New Hampshire State Board of Education issued a resolution that endorsed "the elimination of the use of Indian sports mascots." Other groups holding similar positions that were cited in the Board's resolution included the National Indian Education Association, the Society of Indian Psychologists and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
• In 2001 the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole Nations, "representing over 400,000 Indian people throughout the United States," issued a resolution calling for the end of the stereotypical use of American Indian names and images as mascots in sports.

What part of this doesn't Bennett understand?

Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract." By this standard, it seems that a myopic Bennett and his reactionary comrades will never let the facts influence their opinions.

Robert Eurich
American Indian Sports Team Mascots

This letter was never published.

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