Cathryn Spreeman writes:

<<So now we are back to my original observation, that what I find offensive is not what others may find offensive.  Personally, I would rather live in a society that didn't try to paternalistically protect me from every imaginable offense.  When we start down that road, where does it end?  Who is to say that anyone is "right"?  Isn't everyone entitled to their own point of view?  Do we need to sanitize everything in an effort to not offend anyone ever?>>

If something does offend you, then you have the right (and some might argue even the responsibility) to say that it offends you and to prohibit is in your own house.  That’s what’s happening here.  The NCAA as an institution is saying that the use of certain images as mascots offends it, and it’s not going to allow the use of those images in their tournament.

I also would rather live in a society that doesn’t try to paternalistically protect me from every imaginable offense.  I also don’t see the need to sanitize everything in an effort to not offend anyone ever.  But I also think that a civil society does have some norms, some behaviors that are offensive enough to enough people that it controls and is willing to regulate or even prohibit.  At any one time, there will be disagreement over what those behaviors are; and what those behaviors are will vary over time.

A personal example.  In the Boston Globe the other day, there was a story, and as part of the story there was the reproduction of the front page of a Globe from 1945.  The headline used the terms “Japs.”  The story had nothing directly to do with the war.  I’m sure a lot of folks weren’t offended at all, and I also realize that term was used a lot in those days.  But that day *I* was offended enough to write to the Globe.  I don’t believe that they should have printed that headline.  Not because that term is offensive to the majority of people or even to a lot of people – but because it is offensive enough to me and to a number of people I know. 

<<And finally, the term "native American" is accurately applied to anyone who was born in the Western Hemisphere.  I am a native American, my friend from Costa Rica is a native American, my colleague from Brazil is a native American.>>

It’s certainly more accurate than “Indian”; that doesn’t even get the hemisphere right.  What’s a better term?