For years, Native Americans have been stereotyped, ridiculed and portrayed as team mascots. When a group of Native American college students decided to flip the script, that sent some Whites on the warpath.

In a bold and masterful stroke, the group at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, upset that a nearby high school wouldn’t shed its team nickname, the Fightin’ Reds, satirically named their intramural basketball team, “The Fightin’ Whites.” Their slogan: “Every thang is going to be all white.”

A whitebread Ozzie and Harriet-type, with his hair slicked back, smiling, and dressed in a suit and tie of a bygone era, was selected as the team’s mascot. While the story has received national attention and served as fodder for late-night talk show hosts, many Whites are offended by an act they feel sets them up for ridicule.

That’s evident in the comments posted on The Fightin’ Whites’ Website, www.cafepress.com/fightinwhite.

“Yes, my ancestors killed your ancestors and took their land but I didn’t. So there is no need to go around [placing] the blame on random white people,” writes one.

A person with the screen name of “Bed77” asserts, “I’m white, I’m proud and don’t care a rat’s [behind] what you so-called minorities say…Remember, before ‘Crackers, Euro-Americans’ got here, the Americas didn’t have the wheel, 5,000 years after the rest of the world had it. We’re thankful for the corn, be thankful for the wheel.”

Someone identified online as LunaticPandora1, comments, “How do I feel if there were a team named whites with a stereotyped white man as the mascot…HONORED. I wish the Redskins would change there [sic] name and logo to the Whiteskins. How great that would be.”

One Native American states, “You will never understand. You say life is too short to worry about mascots? How about spending your whole life seeing your people misrepresented by the media? How about going to a baseball game to have a good time, only to be surrounded by insensitive people who chant ‘war songs’ and do tomahawk cops? How about reading the papers and the headline on the sports section is Indians lose again?”

Says another: “We’re called Native Americans because this country’s government lumped 504 individual nations into one category. History lesson, Sherlock, Columbus didn’t discover us cuz we were already here. Regardless of the countless attempts to erase our race, we are still proud of who were are and aren’t going anywhere.”

Eman1305 writes, “You know what I say to you guys who complain about what the government did to you? You should have fought harder.”

Pequawket, who describes himself as a Caucasian, has a suggestion for Eman: “ I would love to see you fight harder against a group much larger than your own and much better armed. And I want you to do this fighting after three-quarters of your people have been wiped out due to disease. Further, have your home taken away, your family brutally murdered, then be forced to live on land that is nearly uninhabitable and thoroughly unworkable.”

J.S. from Tuscon urges: “Drop the Native American slant from the shirts and I’ll applaud the Fighting Whites.”

A Native American in Oakland explains, “The new slogan and T-shirts are not primarily for white people (sorry guys but you are not always the center of the universe). They are spoofs for American Indian people first and foremost who have had to endure the crappy feeling of having cartoonish images of our race plastered all over sports teams that we love.”

According to the National Coalition on Sports and Racism in Media, more than 3,000 schools used Native names and images three decades ago. But one-third of them have since dropped them, largely at the urging of Native Americans.

Stanford University in California changed from the Indians to a color, Cardinal, and St. John’s University in New York switched from being the Redmen to the Red Storm. Unchanged are North Dakota’s Fighting Sioux, Illinois’ Chief Illiniwek and Florida State’s Seminoles.

At the professional level, the Cleveland Indians baseball team still uses an offensive caricature of a Native American chief. The Atlanta Braves fans have not given up the tomahawk chop at baseball games, the Kansas City Chiefs have their Sacred Ground end zone and the Washington Redskins will not call themselves the Whiteskins or any other name.

Now, mocked Native Americans at the University of Northern Colorado are doing some humorous mocking of their own, hoping that others will become more sensitive to how they are depicted.

In a letter published in the online edition of the student newspaper, one White male writes: “Anyone who doesn’t see the humor in this situation is standing too close to the forest. I’m 26 and as white trash as someone can be without being engaged to his own sister, and this is funny.”