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H A W A I I _ S P O R T S

Notebook

Saturday, July 15, 2000

Mail Box

Taking a stand for vocal minorities

Great article on the "Monday Evening QB.'' (Dave Reardon column, July 10).

Glad someone has the courage to stand up to the vocal minorities. You can easily be labeled as anti-Hawaiian for speaking your mind. I feel that these vocal minorities tend to do more harm than good for their cause.

Clyde Young
Hilo

Better fights to pick than with UH mascot

Thank you kindly for wrapping up the trivial and opportunistic issue of the UH mascot (July 10) on behalf of Hawaiians and all other ethnic groups who couldn't give a rip.

This "tribalism" has got to go and I'm grateful to you for spelling it out.

Deborah Cohen
Honolulu

More on UH mascot

Thank you for saying what everyone is thinking.

Craig Watase
Honolulu

Politically incorrect column was correct

Thank you for the politically incorrect column on the Warrior mascot (July 10). I would include in your criticism the UH administration.

Leaders of a university have the responsibility to encourage community dialogue and examination of issues. For years they have groveled to vocal Hawaiian leaders without ever going directly to the broader Hawaiian community for a wider view of Hawaiian issues.

Had they done so, they might have found that there is much that Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians can agree on.

Larry Goldstein
Leeward Community College Library

Mascot column was upsetting, uniformed

I found Dave Reardon's column on the UH mascot upsetting, ignorant, sadly uninformed.

It is not those who opposed the mascot who "picked" a fight, but those who chose the mascot, which was objectionable and objected to from its inception.

On the U.S. continent, the willingness to reflect on the appropriation and desecration of indigenous images has marked a belated waking of conscience about the relations among institutions of "higher learning" and indigenous peoples.

Such institutions recognize connections among demeaning images and centuries of racist thought and practice.

How sad that a colonized media, including Hawaiians like Robert Kekaula and Reardon, should side with those who think prancing cartoonish images of a Hawaiian warrior are innocent and all in good fun.

You are right about one thing: Hawaiian health and prison statistics are more important than a football mascot.

But you are totally illogical in suggesting that because activists like Haunani-Kay Trask and Pi'ilani Smith have "directed attention" to the one issue they are not actively working on a range of other issues.

People of vision see the relations among a range of issues that effect Hawaiians most directly, but the rest of us as well.

I felt I had to write you to point out that articles like yours do effect real harm by encouraging others to not-think along with you.

Paul Lyons
Associate Professor of English
UH Manoa