Native Americans Have Become A Political Pawn Analysis

Ellie Reynolds advances a rhetorically effective argument on why government should not have regulatory control over offensive Native American mascots in schools across the country. She believes this control is more of a detriment to society than a service. Her article published on the DenverPost.com, “Native Americans Have Become a Political Pawn,” offers a compelling point of view on this controversial issue because Reynolds is a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe herself (Reynolds 659). Along with her strong view against government involvement on this issue, which she considers censorship by political correctness, Reynolds uses her personal experience, historical context, and the negative effects of political correctness to convey her effective

Reynolds constructs an interesting correlation of government intervention regarding culture in this matter to the same government intervention that Native Americans had to deal with for much of their history in the United States (659). In this particular portion of her article, she makes the argument that this is the exact same issue that Native Americans have fought against for so long, the government’s right to act and regulate issues of culture (659). Reynolds states, “More government is not the answer to a community concern” (659). Her argument clarifies that this a local issue and thus should be decided locally and not handled by the federal or state governments (659). She is worried that a negative message may be sent to students if schools do change their mascots. Reynolds believes this will relay a message to children to avoid discussing cultural differences of Native Americans because of fear of offending them (659). She believes this is completely detrimental to the understanding and acceptance of cultural differences and acceptance of our differences in society. Reynolds argues that if the mascots are kept, it will invoke more discussion among children and therefore they will have a better understanding of cultural

She believes the growing political correctness in our country and government censorship solves nothing and actually causes more problems than it solves (660). She claims that such actions “selectively [erase] history” (660). Reynolds claims that political correctness and censorship are actually hurting efforts to overcome racism and other acceptance issues. She states not being able to freely discuss issues such as “race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation” is harming the efforts for understanding and acceptance because individuals are not discussing them at all and therefore it hinders them from gaining new perspectives (660). She finishes her argument by stating that the bill will smother our freedom and ability to have productive conversations about Native American history in our culture (660). Reynolds’s concludes her use of pathos by stating the loss of freedom we experience from government censorship as a lest effort to convince her audience to