.vresize.36.36.medium.0.png){kind=small}
.vresize.36.36.medium.0.png){kind=small}
Coachella Valley High School sits in Coachella Valley, on the northern end of the Sonoran Desert in Southern California. Because of the valley’s climate, it has a reliance on date farming similar to many parts of the Middle East. There even is a town called Mecca nearby.
As a nod to this connection, Coachella Valley High in the 1920s nicknamed its teams the “Arabs” and drew its mascot as a Middle Eastern horseman carrying a lance. There have been a few different iterations of it since — the mascot swapped the horse for a scimitar in the 1950s and by the 1980s Coachella’s mascot had become a scowling, older man with a hook nose and a head scarf, which is the version in use today.
A handful of other schools in the region use make some sort of reference to Native American and foreign cultures with their mascots. Indio High has “Rajah,” an Indian prince who wears a turban. Palm Desert High is the Aztecs and La Quinta High is the Blackhawks, though in reference to a bird rather than the noted chief.
But last week, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee sent a letter criticizing Coachella Valley for “orientalist stereotyping.”
“ADC is appalled at the use of a caricature depicted to be an ‘Arab’ as the official mascot of the high school,” the letter reads.
In specific, the ADC objects to Coachella Valley’s use of a student dressed as “Arab” entering at halftime to music, accompanied by a belly dancer, and to the various renderings of the mascot on the walls and floors of the school which include things like magic carpets and genies.
Superintendent Darryl Adams told MyDesert.com the school board will discuss the issue at a meeting Nov. 21.
“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.”
Art Montoya, one of the directors of the school’s alumni association, thinks perhaps the name could be kept if the depictions were changed.
“If they want to keep that Arab name, they need to make it a bit more acceptable,” he said. “Only, I don’t know what that would look like. I don’t know how you could make a face that would be acceptable to everyone in the world.”
