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Gradebook podcast: Native American mascots revisited in Hillsborough County schools

Negative reaction prompts the School Board to stall a plan to remove the images that many find derogatory.
 
The Hillsborough County school district has slowed plans to remove Native American mascots at elementary and middle schools, and scale back the traditions and references at high schools such as East Bay High, whose mascot is the Indians. [Times | 2013]
The Hillsborough County school district has slowed plans to remove Native American mascots at elementary and middle schools, and scale back the traditions and references at high schools such as East Bay High, whose mascot is the Indians. [Times | 2013]
Published June 6, 2019

Three weeks ago, leaders of the nation’s eighth-largest school system celebrated their efforts to respect the Native American community by ridding several schools of their Indian, Chief, Warrior and Brave mascots.

“Using Native American images and mascots can easily reduce living human beings to the level of a cartoon, caricature or stereotype. Even when there is no bad intent, these images can carry on and spread some of the symbols of the most painful parts of our great country’s history,” the district said in its official statement.

But pushback from communities that don’t want change has led the Hillsborough County School Board to request a halt to the move, ostensibly to give members more time to discuss the rationale.

Reporters Marlene Sokol and Jeff Solochek discuss the policy and the politics behind the latest turnabout.