Exploring the Native American Mascot Controversy.

Sports mascots that mimic Native Americans rely on cultural fragments that trivialize and stereotype an entire race, write C. Richard King and Charles Fruehling Springwood in "Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy."

"Native American mascots perpetuate inappropriate, inaccurate, and harmful understandings of living people, their cultures, and their histories," write King and Springwood, editors of the anthology of essays. Both are self-described "Euro-American" scholars, and assistant professors of anthropology. King teaches at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and Springwood is an instructor at Illinois Wesleyan University in downstate Bloomington.

In one essay, the two argue there is a racial pecking order among whites, Native and African Americans at Florida State University in Tallahassee (the school's sports teams are called the Seminoles). "The overall ranking calls for whites to be in charge; the conquered and removed Indians should be revered for ferocity of their historical resistance; and blacks, applauded, if not celebrated, for their exploits on the playing field, should be appreciative of the progress and opportunities of post-civil rights America," they write.

In addition, they discuss the "romanticized Indian" image and its effect on African Americans, suggesting the portrayal offers "a damning contrast to the African captive, who according to white authors. Loved bondage." This image supports the idea that Native Americans fought "passionately," resisting incorporation by whites at any cost, while blacks "eagerly have embraced assimilation, acquiescing before white power for personal gain," the professors write.

"Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy" is published by University of Nebraska Press in Lincoln, Neb.