US Army tribal aircraft names are racist.....

MikeD

MikeD

Administrator
Staff member
.....according to some on the politically correct aisle, following the Washington Redskins debate.

The US Army had traditionally named their aircraft after American indian tribes, beginning from when they started having aircraft as a standalone service post-WWII separate from the USAF. (ie- not including the Army Air Corps timeframe).

Aircraft such as:

OH-13 Sioux
UH-1 Iroquois
U-21 Ute
U-8 Seminole
OV-1 Mohawk
UH-72 Lakota
OH-6 Cayuse
OH-58 Kiowa
CH-54 Tarhe
CH-47 Chinook

....are all apparently racist names and demeaning to American Indians.....according to no American Indians at all, but only to politically correct non-indian people.

By this same logic, is Piper Aircraft corporation also racist and demeaning to American Indians, for their:

PA-42 Cheyenne
PA-34 Seneca
PA-44 Seminole
PA-31 Navajo
PA-28 Cherokee,
...and others?

".......In the United States today, the names Apache, Comanche, Chinook, Lakota, Cheyenne and Kiowa apply not only to Indian tribes but also to military helicopters. Add in the Blackhawk, named for a leader of the Sauk tribe. Then there is the Tomahawk, a low-altitude missile, and a drone named for an Indian chief, Gray Eagle. Operation Geronimo was the end of Osama bin Laden.

Why do we name our battles and weapons after people we have vanquished? For the same reason the Washington team is the Redskins and my hometown Red Sox go to Cleveland to play the Indians and to Atlanta to play the Braves: because the myth of the worthy native adversary is more palatable than the reality — the conquered tribes of this land were not rivals but victims, cheated and impossibly outgunned.

The destruction of the Indians was asymmetric war, compounded by deviousness in the name of imperialist manifest destiny. White America shot, imprisoned, lied, swindled, preached, bought, built and voted its way to domination. Identifying our powerful weapons and victorious campaigns with those we subjugated serves to lighten the burden of our guilt. It confuses violation with a fair fight.

It is worse than denial; it is propaganda. The message carried by the word Apache emblazoned on one of history’s great fighting machines is that the Americans overcame an opponent so powerful and true that we are proud to adopt its name. They tested our mettle, and we proved stronger, so don’t mess with us. In whatever measure it is tribute to the dead, it is in greater measure a boost to our national sense of superiority. And this message of superiority is shared not just with U.S. citizens but with those of the 14 nations whose governments buy the Apache helicopters we sell. It is shared, too, with those who hear the whir of an Apache overhead or find its guns trained on them. Noam Chomsky has clarified the moral stakes in provocative, instructive terms: “We might react differently if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes ‘Jew’ and ‘Gypsy.’......... ”

Story here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...c18738-fc9a-11e3-932c-0a55b81f48ce_story.html
 
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MikeD said:
By this same logic, is Piper Aircraft corporation also racist and demeaning to American Indians, for their:

PA-42 Cheyenne
PA-34 Seneca
PA-44 Seminole
PA-31 Navajo
PA-28 Cherokee,
...and others?l
Click to expand...

Other Pipers:

Apache
Comanche
Pawnee
Aztec
Warrior
Dakota
Arrow
Pillan
Papoose
Chieftan
Mojave
Saratoga
Pocono
Pawnee Brave
Tomahawk
Arapaho
Malibu
 
It's important to "Consider the Source" when giving credence to these "issues". The reality is that this entire issue stemmed from ONE Op-Ed, written by ONE individual, in ONE newspaper.

Google "Simon Waxman" to understand who this individual is. Check his LinkedIn. Look at his credentials. Then.....make informed decisions for yourself as to whether you need to spend one more second of your time giving one cell of brains to this guy, or the issue.
 
GX said:
It's important to "Consider the Source" when giving credence to these "issues". The reality is that this entire issue stemmed from ONE Op-Ed, written by ONE individual, in ONE newspaper.

Google "Simon Waxman" to understand who this individual is. Check his LinkedIn. Look at his credentials. Then.....make informed decisions for yourself as to whether you need to spend one more second of your time giving one cell of brains to this guy, or the issue.
Click to expand...

Completely agree. Unfortunately, stupidity often stems from one idea, often latching onto a parallel related subject.
 
Another example in aviation is VPSQP, Squaw Peak in Phoenix. The actual peak has been renamed to Piestewa Peak for the general public, but it's so entrenched in ATC/Pilot communications as squaw peak that it hasn't changed.
 
KatanaHawk said:
Another example in aviation is VPSQP, Squaw Peak in Phoenix. The actual peak has been renamed to Piestewa Peak for the general public, but it's so entrenched in ATC/Pilot communications as squaw peak that it hasn't changed.
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Squaw Peak! Racist! (even though its been there for decades)

Or how about this Squaw "peak" located in the Vekol Valley? (yes, actual aeronautical map)

photo.JPG
 
MikeD said:
....are all apparently racist names and demeaning to American Indians.....according to no American Indians at all, but only to politically correct non-indian people.
Click to expand...

gne in prog said:
Hurts my head.
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Probably not nearly as much as one of those bullets or small pox infected blankets hurt the heads of their victims. It's real easy to pretend that the horrors whitey inflicted upon natives never really happened. But they did.
Generally, I get much more bothered by PC folks than the stuff the PC folks are getting bothered about. But that's probably because I never experienced the things the PC folks are bothered about, whereas when some PC person is blathering on, I'm standing right in front of that annoying-ass PC person.
But language does matter... a lot. Regardless of how unaware of it we choose to be, and regardless of how much we attempt to deny its import. And history matters, too, whether mythological or authentic.
Being PC is lame. Denying history is lame, too... Just much more dangerous. At the very least, they are generally equally anti-intellectual stances to assume.
 
I'm am poud to have flown the Creek, Kiowa Warrior, soon Balckhawk.
This dude can GFHimself.

@MikeD I'd say the UH72 Lakota is really just painted in Army colors, not really an Army bird.
 
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Jeez. Did this reporter even interview a single Native American before sputtering off like an idiot. Not only does he make himself look like a tool bag but the Washington Post for printing this garbage. I don't know about anyone else but I am sick of these op-ed articles popping up and getting traction. Now if only the military would send a Tomahawk missile to his house.
 
I think naming the team Redskins was probably not the right thing to do but its really just a brand. I grew up in the DC area and that area is so devoted to that team and the brand. It will never change. Not once when I was living there did this topic about the name ever come up.
 
GX said:
It's important to "Consider the Source" when giving credence to these "issues". The reality is that this entire issue stemmed from ONE Op-Ed, written by ONE individual, in ONE newspaper.

Google "Simon Waxman" to understand who this individual is. Check his LinkedIn. Look at his credentials. Then.....make informed decisions for yourself as to whether you need to spend one more second of your time giving one cell of brains to this guy, or the issue.
Click to expand...

We may be better served by going to primary source material. In this case, it may serve us well to read what this individual actually wrote. To analyze the reason of his arguments and test the veracity of his facts. I'll take that any day over doing a vacuous internet search of social media. It may be especially helpful to read what he wrote that is germane to the assumptions some are making about him. Half the problem with "nowdays" is that hardly anyone takes the time to actually read and think about what another is saying. It's so much quicker and easier and more socially conformist to just get one's opinions from one's peer group and one's facts from the first page previews of a Google search.
I don't know Waxman. I've never corresponded with him. I'm neither defending him nor condemning him.
All I'm saying is that reading what he wrote may be the best way to understand what he was talking about. With that in mind, here's one piece to consider:

What Is Political Correctness? by Simon Waxman
This past Friday, I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post discussing the christening of U.S. military equipment with American Indian names. I argue that the choice of these names functions as a subtle form of propaganda because it suggests that the American Indians who were systematically killed, displaced, and forcibly assimilated by whites were powerful rivals of the United States and its armed forces. It is notable that white America—through its armaments, sports mascots, warrior narratives, and other means—emphasizes the skill and aggressiveness with which some American Indians resisted theft and genocide, rather than the facts of those crimes. Everyone knows these facts at least in general terms, and most of us genuinely feel badly about them, but our response is to pay tribute to the martial prowess of our defeated enemies. This choice of emphasis concerns me—specifically, the political ramifications of construing victims of imperialism as worthy opponents in a fair fight.


The article was widely misinterpreted as a brief for political correctness. I may not have made my case clearly enough, but no doubt the headline and publicity tweet the Post’s editors wrote without consulting me—a common hazard of publishing—contributed to the misunderstanding. The Post characterized the naming scheme as “offensive” and a “slur of Native Americans,” but these are not my words, they do not accurately convey my meaning, and I repudiate them without reservation. I would never describe the naming scheme as a slur because I have no idea if anyone is offended by the decision to call a missile Tomahawk or a helicopter Chinook. It is not for me to say, I did not say it, and it makes no difference to my argument.


I myself abhor political correctness. But the PC charge is not only misplaced here. It also burns with irony. The critics so quick and strident with their accusation are reinforcing the very phenomenon—political correctness—they claim to despise.


Political correctness is a project of decontextualizing language. When we are politically correct, we police our words to ensure we don’t say or write the ones that some critical mass of people finds offensive regardless of how they are used. So detested are these words that speaking them in any context is considered insulting.


PC critics want the same thing the politically correct do: a radical disconnect of words from context.


A classic case is the word “•.” Thanks to overweening political correctness, you don’t hear it or see it in print even when you should: most mainstream journalists dare not use it even when reporting on its use by others. Instead the media censor it with bleeps and asterisks, resort to childish euphemisms such as “the n-word,” or contort their prose to avoid it. So deep is America’s hysteria that even saying something that sounds like • can get a person in trouble. (“Hysteria,” incidentally, is a valuable term too often disparaged as sexist even when it is clearly not being used to advance a sexist agenda.)


This is foolish because it assumes that certain words have unalterable meanings, persistent regardless of context. These words cannot be employed in service of a symbol or story because their symbol and story are constant and inherent in them. Indeed, some words, such as • and redskin, project meanings that are understood as pejorative (depending on who is saying them: context), but it is absurd to strike them from the language as a result, to refuse even to recognize their existence, and to reject them even for the purposes of educating and informing.


The politically correct demand—the radical disconnect of words from context—is precisely what my critics also demand. When one troll tweeted “Apache, Apache, Tomahawk, Redskin” at me, he did so, I assume, because he figured that they are not offensive words, but that I am oversensitive and would be insulted anyway. (In case it is not already clear: I am not insulted, on my own behalf or on anyone else’s.) That is to say, the sense of the word, from the troll’s perspective, is inherent in it. It is either actually offensive or it is not, no matter how it is used.


This is the essence of political correctness, and it is antithetical to my argument, which requires that we explore the context of use in order to grasp political narratives that unfold around and are predicated on language and symbols. More concretely, I am saying we should pay attention to context. My critics would rather ignore context and police language. They’d rather declare absolutely which words are offensive and which are not.


So, yes, someone in this debate is grasping for political correctness, but it is not me. My hope is to leave that sort of thinking as far behind as is possible and instead consider the reasons we tell the stories we do and the effects those stories have on our politics, whether or not those effects are intended.


In certain contexts, but not all, our naming tributes to American Indians can banish the discomfort, the sense of guilt that accompanies an uncompensated wrong, we ought to feel about the imperial nature of American conquest and the suffering it has caused. If we focused less on Indian bravery and combat skill and more on victimization, it would not be so easy to just acknowledge guilt and then shelve it in the backs of our minds. If we were not so comfortable, we would take up that guilt as a guiding star in the moral work of governance and accept that those who have been wronged are owed restitution and care, not just tribute and apology.


Sadly, however, reflexive political correctness is being marshaled in support of the political status quo and the historical readings that preserve it.
 
I basically agree with CropDuster, not for the first time. That said, if I were a Jew or a Gypsy (or a homosexual, or a commie, or...), I'd personally take it as a mark of pride if the Luftwaffe were zipping around in BF-109 "Israelite"s or FW-190 "Romany". Or maybe BF-110 "French"es, because, you know, they were both pretty much hopeless, but had verve.

That said, I'd still be trying to shoot them down, so.
 
SeanD said:
Jeez. Did this reporter even interview a single Native American before sputtering off like an idiot. Not only does he make himself look like a tool bag but the Washington Post for printing this garbage. I don't know about anyone else but I am sick of these op-ed articles popping up and getting traction.
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Completely agreed. They should stick to their good, ol'timey op-eds about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and our bedrooms.
 
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