US school urged to remove Arab mascot

thermal (California) — At one high school in the California desert, you may be surprised to see belly dancers performing at halftime of a football game.

Fans who come out to root for the football team known as the Coachella Valley Arabs will also find a snarling, black-bearded mascot wearing a headscarf egging them on. The mascot in this town east of Palm Springs that has existed for nearly a century has now drawn the ire of an anti-discrimination group that deems the caricature offensive and stereotypical.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee recently sent a letter to officials at the Coachella Valley Unified School District asking them to get rid of the mascot, according to the Desert Sun. “By allowing continued use of the term and imagery, you are commending and enforcing the negative stereotypes of an entire ethnic group, millions of whom are citizens of this nation, “Abed Ayoub, the group’s director of legal and policy affairs, wrote in the letter.

The request comes amid mounting pressure for the NFL’s Washington Redskins to change its mascot because it’s offensive to American Indians. The Arab mascot has been around since the 1920s and was chosen to recognise the area’s reliance on date farming, traditionally a Middle Eastern crop.

Superintendent Darryl Adams said the topic will be discussed at a November 21 school board meeting. He said he was taken aback by the “Arab” name when he first was hired two years ago.

“Being an African-American from the Deep South, I’m sensitive to stereotyping,” Adams told the newspaper.

“But in this context, when this was created it was not meant in that way. It was totally an admiration of the connection with the Middle East.” —