New York is discriminating in opposition to a college district that refuses to do away with its Native American chief mascot and will face a Justice Division investigation or threat shedding federal funding, President Donald Trump’s high schooling official mentioned Friday.
U.S. Secretary of Training Linda McMahon, on a go to to Massapequa Excessive College on Lengthy Island, mentioned an investigation by her company has decided that state schooling officers violated Title VI of the federal civil rights regulation by banning using Native American mascots and logos statewide.
The division’s civil rights workplace discovered the state ban is discriminatory as a result of names and mascots derived from different racial or ethnic teams, such because the “Dutchmen” and the “Huguenots,” are nonetheless permitted.
McMahon described Massapequa’s chiefs mascot as an “incredible” illustration of Native American management as she made the announcement backed by dozens of scholars and native officers in the highschool gymnasium.
“The Trump Administration will not stand idly by as state leaders attempt to eliminate the history and culture of Native American tribes,” the previous longtime CEO of World Wrestling Leisure mentioned.
McMahon mentioned her division can be asking the state to voluntarily signal a decision rescinding its Native American mascot ban and permitting districts to proceed utilizing the mascot of their selecting.
The decision would additionally embrace an apology to tribes, acknowledging that the state discriminated in opposition to Native People and “attempted to erase Native American history,” the division mentioned.
JP O’Hare, a spokesperson for the New York schooling division, dismissed McMahon’s go to as “political theater” that disrupted college students’ class time.
He additionally mentioned Massapequa is doing a “grave disservice” to its college students by ignoring information and refusing to seek the advice of with native tribes about their issues over the mascot.
“These representatives will tell them, as they have told us, that certain Native American names and images perpetuate negative stereotypes and are demonstrably harmful to children,” O’Hare mentioned in an announcement. “If we truly wish to honor our Native American people, we will teach our students the true history of the area’s Indigenous people and how they advanced our civilization – rather than perpetuating outdated and disproven myths.”
Trump ordered the federal schooling division, which he has moved to dismantle, to launch an inquiry into the dispute final month. The transfer has made the coastal suburb an unlikely flashpoint within the enduring debate over the place of Indigenous imagery in American sports activities.
Massapequa, which is about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Manhattan, has for years fought a state mandate to retire Native American sports activities names and mascots.
However its lawsuit difficult the state’s 2023 ban on constitutional grounds was dismissed by a federal decide earlier this 12 months.
State schooling officers, who’ve been attempting to take away offending mascots and staff names for greater than 20 years, gave districts till the tip of this college 12 months to decide to changing them or threat shedding schooling funding.
Colleges may very well be exempt from the mandate in the event that they gained approval from a neighborhood Native American tribe, however Massapequa by no means sought such permission, state officers have mentioned.
Residents who assist conserving the mascot have argued the picture has been part of the neighborhood’s id for generations and is supposed to honor its Native American previous.
The city is called after the Massapequa, who had been a part of the broader Lenape, or Delaware, individuals who inhabited the woodlands of the Northeastern U.S. and Canada for 1000’s of years earlier than being decimated by European colonization.
However indigenous residents on Lengthy Island and elsewhere in New York have known as Massapequa’s mascot problematic because it depicts a Native American man carrying a headdress that was sometimes worn by tribes within the American Midwest, however not within the Northeast.
The cheery mascot additionally obscures Massapequa’s legacy of violence in opposition to Native People, which incorporates the location of a bloodbath through which scores of Native males, girls and kids had been killed by Europeans within the 1600s, Native American activists have mentioned.
Massapequa, which is roughly 90% white, has lengthy been a conservative bastion widespread with New York Metropolis police and firefighters.
Trump visited the city final 12 months to attend the wake of a New York Metropolis police officer and has made frequent visits to Lengthy Island because it has shifted Republican.
Comic Jerry Seinfeld, Hollywood’s Baldwin brothers and the Lengthy Island’s alleged Gilgo Seaside serial killer are additionally amongst Massapequa Excessive’s notable alums.
