I'm going to start the paper stating that I don't believe the NCAA mascots have a negative connotation. However, I do understand how Native Americans could feel offended or annoyed by these portrayals of their culture, skin, etc. The same goes for Irish people, or other ethnic groups that are used as mascots.
To understand why a mascot might mean something bad or rude we have to know what mascots are made for and what they are supposed to mean/represent. Mascots are made to show a school's ideals or qualities and represent them in competition, power and influence. The schools in the NCAA have mascots to display their skill and strength in basketball and strike fear in their opponents with a strong idea or person behind their back. This means the thing characterized as the mascot is being glorified and acknowledged for its virtues. But this doesn't necessarily have to be about basketball, or sports at all. These mascots can also apply to education or art, etc. For instance the Dolphin for Whitney Young represents intelligence and academic excellence, but also the power and strength of Dolphins.
However being compared to an animal or an object could be very offensive and means that you and your culture are basically nothing more than animals, no matter how noble. Anyone would find being called a beast offensive and is certainly not acceptable in modern society. For instance no one would ever say the "albinos" or "whites" if they wanted to represent a team with skills of a stereotypical white person. Obviously not the entire white race would have these qualities or be accurately represented by this, but it is comparable to the way Native Americans are portrayed. Also many of the names used to describe the Native Americans are very offensive. For instance the Washington Redskins have a very rude name. "Redskin" is a stereotype of Native Americans for having red-colored skin, which would certainly be offensive to them. It could be comparable to all Asians being stereotyped as "Yellow".
Ultimately however, I think mascots are not all that important in modern day. No one really cares about how scary or powerful a mascot is anymore, and it is mostly for fun. The majority of the populace really doesn't even think about the teams being called Native American names, and it is relatively unimportant. I think it would just be very time consuming and costful to completely change the branding of a franchise.
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