... featuring two baseball hats that each have a stereotypical racist image of a Jewish man and Chinese man to show it has the same connotation as the Cleveland Indians.
The hats were titled “New York Jews” and “San Francisco Chinamen.”
It's an effective poster, you have to admit. It says: You'd never accept those other stereotypes, so why do you accept this?
On the other hand, you can't say this doesn't exist:
Also, I would distinguish that cartoon-y Cleveland logo from the Redskins logo, which is a dignified image:
It's reminiscent of the profiles of Presidents seen on coins. And we did use to have "Indian Head" pennies. On the other hand, "Indians" is a more dignified name than "Redskins."
Thanks to Irene for sending me that top link. She stressed the use of the word "context" in the headline. "Context" is a tag here at Althouse. Irene's stress on "context" might refer to the context of some earlier blogging about context. This, about distinguishing between "implication" and "implicature"? This, about sex out of context? No, I suspect that Irene is being sarcastic about the claim that something is put into context when it is taken out of its place in the real world of culture and tradition and placed next to a couple of things that don't even exist.
But does that undercut the argument made in the poster? We — some of us — might accept the Indians/Redskins logo because we are used to it as it exists in the world that feels normal and natural, even as we would resist the intrusion of some new thing that was very much like it.
Isn't that a helpful thought experiment: What if this were introduced today, would we accept it? Is tradition enough to support something that would never be adopted if it were a proposed innovation?
Notice that I've just put the question at a very high level of abstraction. I've taken the logo controversy out of context. Please put that abstraction into other contexts and contemplate it.
