Hilarious Arab High School Mascot Under Attack

USA Today
November 7, 2013

A high school here is being pressured to abandon its team name and longstanding mascot — a sneering, hook-nosed Arab, sometimes with a single tooth — because of accusations that it is derogatory.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington sent a letter Friday to the Coachella Valley Unified School District, chastising education officials for allowing “gross stereotyping” at Coachella Valley High School in school murals, football halftime shows and the mascot in general.

“ADC is appalled at the use of a caricature depicted to be an ‘Arab’ as the official mascot of the high school,” the letter states. “The image of the Coachella Valley High School mascot depicts a man with a large nose, heavy beard and wearing a kaffiay, (often spelled in English as keffiyeh) or traditional Arab head covering.”

“The ‘Arab’ mascot image is a harmful form of ethnic stereotyping which should be eliminated,” Abed Ayoub, director of legal and policy affairs for the anti-discrimination committee, wrote in the letter. “By allowing continued use of the term and imagery, you are commending and enforcing the negative stereotypes of an entire ethnic group, millions of whom are citizens of this nation.”

The committee, founded in 1980, also has launched an online petition demanding the mascot be changed. More than 400 people had signed as of midday Thursday.

Superintendent Darryl Adams of the Coachella Valley Unified School District, which is about 135 miles southeast of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert, said he will discuss the mascot controversy with the school board during its next meeting Nov. 21. Adams would not say whether he planned to recommend a change of mascot but admitted “the Arab” had caused him to pause in the past.

“When I first came here, I raised an eyebrow (at the mascot),” Adams said. “Being an African-American from the Deep South, I’m sensitive to stereotyping. But in this context when this was created, it was not meant in that way. It was totally an admiration of the connection with the Middle East.”

According to the Coachella Valley High School Alumni Association, the mascot was chosen in the 1920s to acknowledge the importance of date farming, a traditionally Middle Eastern crop, in the east valley. The school with an enrollment of almost 3,000 was opened in 1910.

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