June 3, 2025
After pocketing billions from minstrelsy, Linda McMahon needs to power New York colleges to carry it again.
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Secretary of Schooling Linda McMahon talking throughout a press convention at Massapequa Excessive Faculty on Might 30, 2025, discussing New York State’s ban on Native American mascots.
(Alejandra Villa Loarca / Newsday RM through Getty Pictures)
Generally the irony doesn’t simply burn. It flays the pores and skin. Donald Trump’s training secretary, Linda McMahon—she and her household are the longtime overlords of World Wrestling Leisure—has made billions partially by having her wrestlers embody ethnic and racial stereotypes to the fun of the group. Black pimps, savage Pacific Islanders, and, in fact, primitive Indigenous folks with pretend conflict cries and painted faces performed by people who find themselves about as Native American as Colin Firth—all a part of this system.
This has all the time mirrored the comedic tastes of Linda’s violently misogynistic and virulently racist husband, Vince, all of which McMahon knew learn how to monetize. Racism as standard leisure is Linda McMahon’s lane. With no training expertise, typically wanting confused when questioned in regards to the topic (for McMahon, AI is a steak-sauce), her solely qualification for working in Trump’s cupboard is her expertise for overlaying up alleged rape and baby abuse and defending racism—each useful for this administration.
The shamelessness reached a brand new peak on Might 31 when McMahon held a press convention at Massapequa Excessive Faculty in Lengthy Island, New York, to defend racist Indigenous mascoting. Linda excoriated the state’s ban on Indigenous mascots for public highschool sports activities as a result of, look forward to it, it’s the banning of those minstrel exhibits that’s, in reality, racist.
Due to this so-called racism, she introduced that Trump will pull training funds from the state until Massapequa Excessive Faculty can hold calling themselves “the Chiefs.” The regime additionally demanded that Governor Kathy Hochul challenge a private, public apology for responding to grassroots stress and enacting the ban. It’s extra unprecedented mafia politics from this regime, utilizing the specter of destroying the state’s public colleges until its reactionary social agenda is obeyed.
Present Situation
“The Trump Administration won’t stand idly by as state leaders try and remove the historical past and tradition of Native American tribes,” McMahon stated, surrounded by a coterie of white college students. McMahon was additionally backed by the Native American Guardians Affiliation, a conservative group of Indigenous folks that had been flown in from North Dakota. In the meantime, the precise tribal councils in New York State have affirmed and reaffirmed that mascoting is degrading, and, in line with American Psychiatric Affiliation research, harms Native children. Given McMahon’s historical past of allegedly overlaying up baby abusethe training secretary’s disregard of those research is chilling. She is right here to harm kids on the behest of this administration’s retrograde racial politics.
By conflating Indigenous minstrelsy—white folks in face paint—with illustration, it additionally makes it simpler for non-Natives to disregard precise points plaguing Native communities, like poverty and poor healthcare entry. It’s a warped model of visibility that solely serves to erase. As a spokesperson from the Nationwide Congress of American Indians stated, “These depictions will not be tributes—they’re rooted in racism, cultural appropriation, and intentional ignorance.”
McMahon traveled to Massapequa following a report decrying mascot bans by the Civil Rights Division of Trump’s Justice Division, which has now been weaponized to assault all anti-racism as prejudicial to whites. Like a remedial debater backed by zero research or stats, Trump and his cronies contend that if we will have mascots just like the Dutchmen, as a special highschool in Lengthy Island does, then it’s racist to forestall Native People from being mascots too. It’s a silly, tiresome argument straight out of 1982, however I’ll tackle it however: There aren’t broad, nationwide organizations of Dutch folks clamoring to alter these names. Possibly that’s as a result of throughout this factor that occurred known as historical past, the Dutch had been the conquerors of the higher New York Metropolis space, not the conquered. They weren’t the victims of land theft and genocide. Making mascots of Native People not solely commemorates the demeaning stereotype of savageness but in addition implicitly celebrates the white people within the stands whose ancestors had the gumption—or extra precisely, the weapons and germs—to eradicate them. This isn’t about Indigenous rights or illustration. It’s about making non-Native college students and neighborhood members comfy with their very own racism: white supremacy with out the guilt, which is a working theme of this administration.
Then there’s the toxic lie that Trump cares about Indigenous populations, when his bald racism towards Native folks has been a constant a part of his life for many years. If he actually cared, he’d apologize for the actual fact that Native persons are being “mistakenly” arrested by ICE. It’s simply extra gaslighting from this regime, akin to this cupboard of open antisemites claiming to have zero tolerance for antisemitism. This previous week, a real hater of Jews, conservative nepo child Kingsley Wilsonwas promoted to spokesperson of the Division of Protection over the meek objections of the ADL.
As for Massapequa, regardless of being a really conservative neighborhood, on hours’ discover it pulled collectively a major protest that stuffed the streets exterior the college. We want extra of this. Or we will passively settle for that Linda McMahon, a part of the household that took an Italian wrestler named Joe Scarpa and renamed him Chief Jay Strongbow, offers a rattling about any of this.
Some may say that that is yet one more of the administration’s weapons of mass distraction, diverting our consideration to this absurdity as a substitute of the brand new finances that can upend folks’s lives and kill many individuals who can be pressured to lose their medical insurance. This can be true on one degree, however now we have to see that McMahon’s erasure agenda walks hand in glove with Trump’s oligarchical heist. The extra we’re divided, as a substitute of unified just like the protesters in Massapequa, the extra they may steal. Anti-racism shouldn’t be a facet challenge. It’s a vital a part of the sort of unity that may efficiently problem an outlaw administration.
That’s why they hate it a lot. Trump and McMahon are keen to halt faculty funding, humiliate elected officers, and demonize—and even criminalize—individuals who gained’t mock Native People at sporting occasions.
It boggles the thoughts that that is how they’re selecting to train essentially the most highly effective levers of federal energy—till you notice that their agenda can not succeed with out division, regardless of how racist, regardless of how undemocratic, and regardless of how violent.
Dave Zirin
Dave Zirin is the sports activities editor at The Nation. He’s the creator of 11 books on the politics of sports activities. He’s additionally the coproducer and author of the brand new documentary Behind the Protect: The Energy and Politics of the NFL.
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