Native Americans aren't offended by Native American mascots

The argument

This argument rests on a claim about who is entitled to judge whether a depiction gives offence. On this view most of the people getting offended by the use of Native American imagery in sports branding are not Native Americans themselves, and offence taken on another group's behalf does not by itself establish that the group has been wronged. If the people whose culture is being adopted in the branding do not have an issue with it themselves, proponents argue, then the act is not offensive. The question is treated as an empirical one, and the relevant evidence is what the depicted group reports rather than what observers assume it must feel. The evidence offered is survey evidence. A Washington Post poll carried out among Native Americans found that nine out of ten took no offence from their likeness being used in mascots, or from their names and imagery being employed in logos. Proponents treat that result as decisive for the way the dispute is ordinarily framed: a campaign conducted in the name of a group whose members, when asked, overwhelmingly report no grievance is a campaign speaking for people who have not asked to be spoken for. On this reading a team name or logo drawn from Native American imagery operates as the tribute its users take it to be, and withdrawing it answers a complaint the supposedly injured party has not made. The argument therefore stands or falls with the polling it cites, and proponents accept in effect that their case is an empirical one: not that offence could never be given, but that on the measure available the group in question reports that it has not been. The standing of that measure is itself contested, since findings of this kind turn on how respondents are identified and how the question is put, and this single poll is the evidence on which the conclusion rests.

Context

Nine out of ten Native Americans polled said they saw no issue with sports team using their likeness and culture as part of their branding.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Even if only ten per cent of the community takes offence to the practice, it is still offensive by definition. If something is offensive, it means that it has caused offense to a demographic or group of people. There is no minimum threshold for offensive. If even one Native American finds the practice offensive, it becomes offensive by definition.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] If even one person takes offence, then the object is offensive by definition.