My high school changed their mascot from the Rebels two years ago almost and the alumni page is still full of dudes posting shit like “once a rebel always a rebel” and every few months I lose my shit and decide to get into it with them
They also renamed my old middle school because the guy it was named after, David Starr Jordan, was a MASSIVE eugenicist and might also have covered up a murder?!
They changed it to Dolores Huerta Middle School, who actually did great things AND made a difference in our community.
My college is renaming a LOT of buildings to make up for the group of eugenics promoters that were involved there early days. Even the centerpiece tower named after the famous scientist!
Dolores Huerta is probably an upgrade from DSJ, but she's not at all unproblematic, herself. These days, UFW is less a workers union and more a piggy bank for the Huerta and Chavez families. Farm workers deserve a real union that spends more time organizing than fund raising.
My son's school was called Totem and the mascot was the Thunderbirds. Once WA state law changed local tribes were contacted and they were like aw hell no. They're the Evergreen Grizzlies now.
Ours was, and still is, the Red Eddies. Eddie was the ghost of the guy the school was named after. So we were all red ghosts of one guy.
What was really strange about this, though, was that our school colors were maroon and white; the ghost was pure white. And I swear that all of this is true.
I went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania. It was the Indians, then they had a poll to decide on the new mascot. "Fighting Squirrels" won, I think, but they decided on Crimson Hawks instead. Missed opportunity, IMO...though I'm happy they named the Hawk "Norm."
Mine was inexplicably the Blue Devils.
We had no connection to Duke or the French.
The other high school in out district were the Bulldogs, so the handful of teams that were combined across the schools were the Devil Dogs. I suggested Cerberus for that mascot, but it was not adopted.
Ours was the Warriors. The mascot was a stereotypical depiction of a Native American. They later changed the logo to a spear (with a feather tied to it, lest anyone forget the overtly racist connotations). And that wasn't even the most racist thing about our sports teams. That city sucked/sucks.
I hate how the worst people in history have co-opted a legitimately cool general term like “rebel” that would make a good mascot if not for the very obvious connotations
I will say I’m still baffled when a school changes its mascot from “warriors” for sensitivity reasons since literally every culture in history has had a term for People Who Do Violence Good but hey, if they want to rebrand that’s their business, more power to them
One of our local hockey teams is the Warriors, and a couple of years ago they simply got rid of their horrifically racist logo and replaced it with a really sharp one that references the local aerobatics flight team. Easy peasy.
My university did that 30 years ago; the logo and the character they had at games definitely needed changing but a bunch of us at the time felt they just could have rebranded “warriors” … but we also didn’t make complaining about it our whole identity.
My father went to Great Neck South H.S. on Long Island (New York metro area). Since they’re “South,” they’re also the Rebels. In the 80s, though, they changed from a Confederate soldier and flag to an American Revolution soldier and Betsy Ross flag. Sure.
My high school had to repaint a mural because white supremacists started using a hand gesture it was making (pretty sure it wasn't intentional) and I'm relieved that as far as I know everyone said "yeah that makes sense."
The biggest "scandal" we actually have is that the mascot's name is shortened to Topper and there's been at least four decades of adults pretending not to have noticed what that's slang for.
The confederates’ successors need to feel some big losses this decade, and I hope for everyone’s sake that ballot and court losses are enough, but I think we’re ready to hand them as many battlefield losses as they need, or, if it comes down to it, I’m sure the South will raze again.
We were clearly a segregation academy and we changed from the Rebels to the Mavericks 20 years ago. (Wes Anderson is an alum and based “Rushmore” on the school [this was pre-name change], changing the mascot to the Yankees).
Oh, I forgot to mention, we were SUCH a segregation academy, we had the stars and bars flag in everything. IIRC, Anderson has a visual comment about that.
We had a whole bunch of wooden chairs around with this horrible logo on the back. Anderson, rather than use any other of many other kinds of chairs in the world, had one duplicated with a different logo. I think it was intentional.
