Western Washington University’s Viking Mascot is Targeted for Cancellation
“the Task Force found names idolizing conquest as out of line with the university’s contemporary values around honoring local Indigenous communities”
This is not about vikings being problematic. It’s about people who think they know better and who want to choose a new mascot.
The College Fix reports:
Is the Viking next to go? WWU eyes ditching Viking mascot due to colonialism
Western Washington University may scrap its Viking mascot and is currently conducting an investigation to help make a final decision on the issue.
The effort was spawned in part from requests asking the public university to remove the names of four buildings on campus due to racism concerns: Huxley College of the Environment, Mathes Hall, Haggard Hall, and the Viking Union.
In December, trustees announced that T.H. Huxley’s name would be removed, citing the scientist’s “white supremacist values that dehumanize and harm many members of the Western community.” The Haggard and Mathes names were spared.
But the verdict is out on the Vikings. A “strong majority” of the university’s Legacy Review Taskforce recommended to trustees to remove “Viking” from the Viking Union.
“The Task Force was concerned about the harm caused by asking all members of the Western community to identify with a figure that is potentially exclusive on the basis of both ethnicity and gender,” the taskforce stated in its report.
“Furthermore, the Task Force found names idolizing conquest as out of line with the university’s contemporary values around honoring local Indigenous communities. Task Force members who did not recommend renaming in this report proposed the building name be evaluated alongside the mascot by a separate committee.”
Trustees directed the university “to conduct a more thorough assessment of the Viking name in the broader context of the University mascot,” the December news release states.
The media and communications team at Western Washington University did not respond to requests from The College Fix seeking comment.
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This… is getting tiresome.
I’m perfectly fine with Anglo-Saxon now being a protected victim class.
But they will have a hard time picking a name “honoring local Indigenous communities.” Washington’s Dem-controlled legislature recently passed laws requiring public schools using any indigenous-associated names to change them. No more Braves, Warriors, Indians, Redskins, Chiefs, etc. Most of them are switching to animals for mascot names.
Vikings? Racist, yah, you betcha.
Tribalist maybe.
Racism is a ‘social construct’ devised by…well you know.
The largest-ever study of Viking DNA has revealed a wealth of information, offering new insights into the Vikings’ genetic diversity and travel habits. The ambitious research analyzed DNA taken from 442 skeletons discovered at more than 80 Viking sites across northern Europe and Greenland. The genomes were then compared with a genetic database of thousands of present-day individuals to try to ascertain who the Vikings really were and where they ventured. One of the project’s primary objectives was to better understand the Viking diaspora, says University of California, Berkeley, geneticist Rasmus Nielsen.
It turns out that the roving bands of raiders and traders, traditionally thought to have come only from Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, were far more genetically diverse than expected. According to Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, one of the most unexpected results was that the Viking Age of exploration may have actually been driven by outsiders. The researchers found that just prior to the Viking Age and during its height, between A.D. 800 and 1050, genes flowed into Scandinavia from people arriving there from eastern and southern Europe, and even from western Asia. In contrast to the traditional image of the light-haired, light-eyed Viking, the genetic evidence shows that dark hair and eyes were far more common among Scandinavians of the Viking Age than they are today. “Vikings were not restricted to genetically pure Scandinavians,” says Willerslev, “but were a diverse group of peoples with diverse ancestry.”
Oh bs. Just more retroactive multiculturalism. They tried to say they found a ‘trans’ one, too.
Interesting, but since when has the Left cared about facts?