There’s a pretty ugly history of using indigenous names and mascots for sports teams. Change is always hard and expensive, but Adidas has offered help to schools who are willing to ditch their racist names and/or mascots:
The cost of changing from a racist high school team name and mascot to one that isn’t can be high.
Whoever’s in charge has to survey the community, and explore what new symbol could better represent them than their previous caricature of someone else’s heritage. There are probably snacks involved.
Adidas, unlike corporations that would normally seek to profit from this situation, is offering to help in what appears to be a constructive and useful manner.
Adidas will provide free services to help communities resolve these difficult decisions. They’re also discounting and helping to finance the costumery and signage changes that result from the choice to switch to a non-racist mascot.
I usually think that corporations doing good have some kind of ulterior motive, and there may be one here that I don’t detect, but this just appears to be Adidas doing something pretty awesome. Well done.
One response to “Adidas Helps Schools Ditch Racist Names”
Ryan Strang liked this on Facebook.