Crimes against Humanity-Churchill

Throughout this whole article, I was very ashamed and angry that people don't think certain things can be very degrading and are oblivious as to how it makes others feel. "Churchill's essay is a hard one for me to read percisely because it makes these stereotypes visible to me in unusual and decidedly in-your-face ways." (537) I personally do not think I have ever thought of team names as stereotyping or degrading until I read this essay. This essay truly opened my eyes on how stereotypical our world is and how we can be so ignorant. Professional sports teams have names like the Atlanta Braves or the Cleveland Indians and they also have mascots and gestures that show the stereotypical indian to be. This to me is wrong and when Churchill said the American Indian Movement leader Russell Means compared the practice to contemporary Germans naming their soccer teams the "Jews," "Hebrews," and "Yids" it opened my eyes to how hurtful it can be to Indians. (537) When Churchill reported that the major newspapers and television networks stated this as "no big deal" I thought of them as heartless and racist. The essay became a little sarcastic to prove his point when Churchill said all the demeaning and hurtful names to call different races as professional sports teams and then said "Now, don't go getting 'overly sensitive' out there. None of this is demeaning or insulting, at least not when it's being done to Indians." (538) I thought he proved his point right in this part of the essay and I think he would have won his argument right here. He said all the hurtful names of every race for every professional team and I don't think that anyone could counter this. In the Nuremberg Precedents, I think Julius Streicher got what he deserved because he instigated the genocide of the Jews. He dehumanized Jews by depicting them in a extraordinary derogatory fashion in cartoons and other images which helped in the German public to hate them. "Understand that the treatment of Indians in American popular culture is not 'cute' or 'amusing' or just 'good clean fun." I believe him after reading this essay and I will try not to depict Indians as savage or inhuman in anyway.