The Neshaminy School District's "Redskins" moniker and former mascot does not violate a Pennsylvania law that prohibits discrimination, a state appeals court has ruled.

 

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania on Monday overturned a decision by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Many groups and individuals consider the nickname to be racist, offensive and hurtful due to its history and origins.

 

The PHRC previously said Neshaminy could continue using the word Redskins so long as it also provided education regarding its "negative and positive attributes."

 

Among them, it is associated with the practice of scalping. For a time, the U.S. government paid monetary rewards for killing Native Americans and providing scalps as evidence.

 

The PHRC, in a ruling in November 2019, also also directed that the school district cease using “any and all logos and imagery in the Neshaminy High School that negatively stereotype Native Americans.”

 

The district appealed the decision, in part, saying it had received no clear guidance from the PHRC on what specific images it considers stereotypical or what curriculum changes need to be made regarding Native American education.

This is a guest blog post contributed by Arla Patch who I met at a recent weeklong series of hearings held by the PA Human Rights Commission at Bucks County Community College in Newtown Township. Ms. Patch was the Community Engagement Coordinator for the Maine Wabanaki State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission when she lived in Maine. She now lives in Quakertown.

Why do some communities hang on with all their might to the term “Redsk*ns,” which is considered a racist slur by many, while other communities hear the Native American voices that ask them to release it? In particular, why do the largely Euro-America members of the Nashaminy school board, teachers and parents say they use the racial slur “R word” to HONOR Native Americans and yet attack, berate and highly disrespect the very Native People who are asking them to stop using it? Even when Native American members of the same community insist that it DOES NOT honor them?

 

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District teachers union President Tara Huber and former student and student newspaper editor Gillian McGoldrick said they consider the name Neshaminy uses for its sports teams racist.

 

Neshaminy School District teachers union President Tara Huber was told by Superintendent Joseph Jones III that she should “find work elsewhere” when she brought up the “Redskin” name and logo the district uses for its sports teams, Huber testified Tuesday during a Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission hearing on the issue.

 

During the second day of a weeklong series of hearings being held at Bucks County Community College in Newtown Township, Huber said she brought up the name issue to Jones last year after a meeting of a district committee designed to promote workplace diversity.

 

“I asked him how can we be having discussions about workplace diversity while at the same time having a mascot that is racist,” Huber testified.

 

At one point during their talk, Jones told her she should “find work elsewhere” if she felt that way, Huber added.

 

During her lengthy testimony Tuesday, Huber recounted the long history of the “Redskin” issue as it related to the Neshaminy student newspaper The Playwickian. Huber, an English teacher at Neshaminy School, was faculty advisor to the newspaper from 2000 to 2016.

 

The newspaper first published an editorial opposing the use of the name in 2001, and then two more during Huber’s later years as advisor. In 2013, a majority of the editorial staff voted to ban use of the name from the paper. The district eventually imposed a policy that the name could be deleted from stories but not from submitted letters or opinion pieces, Huber said.

 

McGoldrick, a 2016 Neshaminy graduate and a junior at Temple University, was on the Playwickian staff all four years of high school and was editor-in-chief her last year. She had started attending Neshaminy schools as a sixth-grader after going to Catholic schools before that.

 

She testified that her opinion about the use of the name changed in 2013 during a newsroom debate on the issue.

 

“I just accepted it at first and didn’t think much about it,” she said. “I knew it was a big tradition. During this debate I started on the side that was defending use of the name. Then, somebody on the other side compared use of the Redskin name to (another slur), and that made me just get up and change sides. It felt like I had been lied to, that I had been bamboozled into thinking use of ‘Redskin’ was OK and I had been accepting it for so long.”