The whining Illini

Once again, let's congratulate the self-righteous activists for sinking to new depths previously thought unattainable.

The successful campaign to retire the University of Illinois' Chief Illiniwek was one of the most juvenile, desperate, and ridiculous acts of rampant political correctness in recent memory.

It wasn't even a 'campaign;' it was a naked assault on logic and reason. And, ultimately, it will prove a Pyrrhic victory.

Native Americans have it worse off than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States today. In every category (health, education, crime, rape, poverty, unemployment), Native Americans fare worse than non-Indians.

On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, unemployment stands at 85 percent, and 97 percent live below the poverty line.

Both adolescent suicide and infant mortality rates are over four times the national average.

There's no shortage of causes to be fought for, publicized and won. And Chief Illiniwek is vilified as the most urgent threat to their plight?

Before continuing, it's important to distinguish who exactly regards the Chief as a crude, racist stereotype.

The Peoria tribe is the closest living descendants of the Illiniwek Confederacy. Former tribal chief Don Giles said in a 1995 interview with WICD-TV, "To say that we are anything but proud to have these portrayals would be completely wrong. We are proud. We're proud that the University of Illinois...is drawing on that background of our having been there. And what more honor could they pay us?"

In 2002, the Peter Harris Research Group Poll found that among Native Americans, 81 percent supported Indian nicknames in high school and college sports, and 83 percent supported the use of Indian mascots and symbols in professional sports.

In 2005, current Peoria chief John Froman said he didn't support the Chief not because it was a racist symbol, but because "the costume is Sioux," and not Illiniwek.

So who opposes the Chief? Oh, the usual suspects: Amnesty International, NEA, NAACP and the National Congress of American Indians.

As these are special interest groups with narrowly defined interests, perhaps the University students themselves should have decided the fate of the Chief.

Well, they did. In March 2004, the Daily Illini published a student poll regarding the issue, in which 69 percent of University of Illinois students voted to keep the Chief.

Unfortunately for democracy, special interest groups have little use for the will of the people.

Who cares what the majority of both students and Native Americans think? There's a powerful grievance industry to maintain.

As is standard procedure nowadays, a non-democratic institution was used to enforce the will of the political minority.

Whereas the courts were used to outlaw the Pledge of Allegiance, with Chief Illiniwek it was the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which banned all postseason events at the University of Illinois until the Chief was removed.

If the Chief's inauthentic dance and costume were the source of protest, as the activists claimed, wouldn't the obvious remedy be to correct the dance and costume? Wouldn't that be a truly multicultural outreach?

But that would defeat the goal of the grievance industry, which is to keep certain groups in statuses of victimization for as long as possible.

The Illiniwek cannot be brave warriors. They must be helpless children who need the protection and guidance of these special interest groups and expanded bureaucracies.

It goes without saying that the Chief was never intended to be a symbol of disrespect or racism. Being of part Irish descent, I take no offense to the "Fighting Irish" mascot whom, though inaccurate, I nonetheless find honorable representing my culture as a symbol of fighting spirit.

The Illiniwek culture's use by the university to motivate students, to give them a sense of pride and comradeship and to lead them to victory could only be twisted into a negativity by those who have entirely too much free time on their hands.

Unfortunately, when people think "Illini," they will not think of the actual plight of the Native American. They will think of the Chief (now a political martyr) and of the culture police who forcibly retired hi