It’s the American way to rename team mascots that are offensive
Put it up for auction
Regarding “Washington could change its mascot,” (C1, July 4): I would like to make a modest proposal to defuse the rancor over the name of a football team. Let’s change the name the American way. The owner of the team should put the name up for auction. The highest bidder wins and names it by any name he chooses. Problem solved in true American fashion. If you can sell naming rights to stadiums, then why not teams?
John Johnson, Nederland
Confederate monuments
Regarding “Confederate ‘legacy’ is imaginary and hateful,” (A19, July 5): It seems to me that if the majority of citizens in a city want to remove Confederate statues, then they should do it. But after the offending statues are gone, what have we done to make people’s lives better? What if we decided to end the so-called war on drugs and instead treated drug addiction as a medical problem? Instead of focusing on locking people up, we could be helping individuals overcome drug addiction. Often they are struggling financially and they are disproportionately people of color. I’m not saying it would be easy or cheap, but it would improve American lives.
David J. Maschek, Sugar Land
Let’s be clear. The Dick Dowling statue was removed because it depicted Dowling in a Confederate uniform, not because it failed to meet Richard Parker’s artistic standards. Parker’s fervor in supporting its removal expanded into an attack on the sculptor personally. Frank Teich’s Confederate sentinel was duplicated across Texas, but he was not the personification of the Confederate cause. He accepted those commissions to support his family and did so at a time when most Texans, including those writing for this newspaper, thought such statues were just fine. Didn’t like the Dowling statue? What about Teich’s base for Hermann Park’s statue of Sam Houston? Or his obelisk at the park’s reflecting pool? Or our own Texas State Capitol, built by stone cutters hired by Gustav Wilke and working under Teich’s supervision. Parker’s attack on sculptor Teich was gratuitous and a diversion from the more serious subject of how best to confront racism.
Susan Teich, Houston