It’s all the rage to change sport team names, especially if they’re based on Native American culture. But, hey, what about the Cowboys? I know the Dallas Cowboys reside in Texas but should football appropriate the name of a common laborer? I mean, is that culturally acceptable? Remember, cowboy has been used historically as a derogatory slur. Reagan’s enemies called him a cowboy, and they didn’t mean it in a good way. A rodeo clown got vilified for wearing an Obama mask. It was criticized as disrespectful. Then you have Wyatt Earp’s bitter enemies. They were a street gang called the cowboys, or sometimes cow-boys. In Britain, a cowboy is someone who sells shoddy goods or services. In popular culture, a cowboy is almost always portrayed as a young white male who flaunts his independence and may even embrace lawlessness. Snobs with self-described good taste disdain cowboy fiction, film, music, and even poetry. Historians, of late, have made them out as the villains in the country’s push westward.
In truth, cowboys were mostly migrant seasonal labor. They might have been hired hands, but they deserve to have their culture preserved intact and not mocked by throwing around a piece of cow skin. (They call it pig, but we know better.)
These hardy men kept the nation fed, cow towns profitable, and were so in tune with nature that they knew in which direction the sun set. Granted, they were rowdy, smelly, and profane, but they were also honorable and hardworking. It’s ludicrous to assert that their image is honored by a bunch of multi-millionaire play-boys in tight pants?
Let’s face it, the Dallas team-name offends the sensitivities of twenty-first century Americans.
It must be changed for the sake of diversity and inclusiveness.
Let’s face it, the Dallas team-name offends the sensitivities of twenty-first century Americans.
It must be changed for the sake of diversity and inclusiveness.
But leave the girls alone. We like them just as they are.
P.S. Out of respect for this noble profession, there are few cowboys or cows in The Steve Dancy Tales. Instead, I appropriated the culture of miners because I liked their square toed boots.
