Jan 12th, 2016: Whitesboro Seal... again

[xoxoxoBruce]

Whitesboro, NY, is in the news again with their town seal. Amusing Planet says...

The seal was originally designed in 1883 and showed the Indian closer to the ground, and with White’s hands actually on the Native American’s neck. When Whitesboro was sued over the seal by a Native American group in the 1970s, the village changed the image moving the founder’s hands from the Native American’s neck to his shoulders.

The mayor responds...

Although Whitesboro has agreed to vote on it, village officials maintain that the seal is not racist, derogatory or violent, but a very accurate depiction of an important event in the village’s history that helped build relations between White and the area’s Native American population. According to the village’s website, White accepted the challenge of a friendly duel, and “by a fortunate trip” succeeded in throwing the chief to the ground almost instantly. “After the fight, Hugh White became a hero in the eyes of the Oneida Indians,” the website read.

With the flames fanned by websites like this one, where self described...

Mathew Rodriguez is a Staff Writer at Mic. He is a queer Latino New Yorker who enjoys female rappers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Flannery O'Connor.

wrote the following...

Currently, the seal depicts two men in a struggle: A white man with his hands seemingly on the shoulders and neck of a stereotypical feather-in-hair Native American, with the Native American being toppled to the ground, apparently shouting in pain.

Damn, with that imagination, that boy should be a writer. Oh wait, he is.

Then someone starts an online petition ...

I am Lenape Indian and a citizen of both the Delaware Tribe of Indians and Cherokee Nation. I want to express my disgust and disappointment in this image displayed on city police cars and letterhead. Many local nations, like the Oneida, Mohawks, Lenape, Shinnecock, Mahicans, and Onondaga, agree that the logo is very much disrespectful to Native Americans.

...yielding 9600 signatures, one of which commented...

A story about Hugh white beating a Native American in a wrestling match is just as offensive and racist as a seal depicting a strangling and or beating.

Uh Ramon, the wrestling match was the Indian’s custom, Mr White was going along to get along. The scenarios people conjure up are crazy.

Oneida Nation Council Turtle Clan representative Clint Hill, however, said the description of the seal’s portrayal did not seem patently offensive, although he had not seen it in person. The Oneidas typically had good relationships with area settlers, he said, and “Indian wrestling,” in which opponents place their feet together and use only one arm to try to throw the other person, is a common game among friends. “With the so-called Indian wrestling, you just knocked the person off balance,” he said. “We used to do it all the time as kids.”
If anything, Hill said, he would want the image changed to more accurately portray the wrestling style and to show the proper headdress for the Indian in the image. An Oneida would wear one with two feathers pointing up and one pointing down, he said.

Hmm, must have been described in great detail.
Of the 10 or so designs the residents can vote on, these four were submitted by The Daily Show.



Plus the current one makes five, I haven't seen any more.
The polls closed at 9PM Monday night but I haven’t seen any results yet.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The results are in. The towns 3735 residents have replied to the critics. Of the 212 votes cast, 157 voted to retain the current seal.

[DanaC]

I think, given the wider historical context,it is an unfortunate image. With the story, it makes sense and does not seem founded on any racism. Without the story, it is very easily misconstrued.

[xoxoxoBruce]

People would rather misconstrue than bother to find out the story.

[glatt]

The ironic thing is that in this case it's the liberals doing it. Just in the last week or two there was a lot lot of conservative bashing by liberals because the Washingtonpost online fact checker closed up shop because conservatives don't care when their guys lie. They simply don't care. This time, it's the liberals who don't care.

[xoxoxoBruce]

And the clickbaiters will jump on any wagon of indignation passing by. That's why a small town seal, which very few people ever see, stirs up a fuss worldwide. Suddenly "public opinion" is measured by reaction of a public it doesn't concern.

[Clodfobble]

I suspect that the satirical murals from the set of "Parks and Rec" may have brought more attention to crappy small-town art than it previously had.

[xoxoxoBruce]

And the kerfuffle over the Confederate battle flag has sent do-gooders and clickbaiters scouring the country for politically incorrect symbolism.

[DanaC]

I daresay the Redskins haven't helped matters much.

I totally get why the town wants to keep their symbol. They're steepedin their town history and that symbol, with the story is innocuous. Unfortunately, the town exists in a country in which lots of other historic symbols, statues and mascots, and indeed place names carry rather more negative connotations. I can understand how someone might see that symbol and assume it is one of the latter. I can also understand that they may jump to conclusions because of it, given that they are not steeped in the town's history and they live in a country in which the cultural identity of the indigenous peoples has, over two centuries, been appropriated wholesale by the descendants of the people who all but annihilated them.

It's bound to be a touchy subject.

[glatt]

I wonder what the budget is for a small town of 3,735 to be spending money on designing a new seal, and replacing every last thing in town that bears the seal, just to satisfy a bunch of strangers on the internet who don't know a thing about their town and can't be bothered to learn the story behind their seal?

[DanaC]

Yeah, that's not an incidental sum, I'm guessing. .

They shouldn't change it. No more than they should change their rather unfortunate sounding name, which commemorates White, not designates white. But we shouldn't be surprised by the perennial, internet-fuelled outrage.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Whitesboro name, in combination with the seal, add fuel to the Imaginations of people looking to be offended. You know 3foot lives in the same state, on the same latitude, not far from Whitesboro. Coincidence?

[DanaC]

I think 'looking to be offended' is fair for some, but not for others. 'Already offended by a big bucket of offensive shit over a fairly long period of time and therefore primed to see something that looks similar at a surface level to that stuff as the same', might account for some of them.

Time was it'd be something you might mention to your friends - shit, man there's a town with a white settler throttling a native american in full headdress as their symbol and they called themselves Whitesboro. Now it all goes online. Instantly.

[Happy Monkey]

The thing is, if you need to have an explanation for why a logo isn't racist, it's a bad logo.

You might think that two bolts of lightning is a good logo for a power company, but if it looks like the SS logo, don't do it.

And the art doesn't do them any favors. The newer logo looks more like a throttling than the older one.

[glatt]

I agree it's a bad logo, but if you are a citizen of that little village and you have potholes all over town because you live in the rustbelt, are you going to vote to spend money fixing a stupid logo just to satisfy a bunch of strangers on the Internet? There are real problems to deal with in small villages. Logos aren't one of them.

If I was mayor, I would start an online fund for donations to change the logo. Those strangers can put up or shut up. Once enough money is raised, I'd use it to hire artists to submit a bunch of logo ideas and then let the town council vote on them. But I wouldn't spend a penny from the town's own coffers.